I talk to Bob at night before I go to bed. I ask him for help and say I love him. This makes me feel connected to what is eternal. I also bless myself as if I were another person altogether. Then I end another simple day. Now that I have a book out, I am more hopeful than I have been in a long time. I feel it will develop wings and go on a journey that I will enjoy.

He came to me in a dream recently and let me know that I was doing fine, spiritually speaking. He wanted me to be less passive toward life and so I am going to share my message freely from this point on with whoever wants it. It is so simple. Everything is in the hands of God. Everything given to God is returned to us on a higher plane. When I am reunited with my lost loves, we will not recognize each other for our beauty.

It is only five years later that his tenderness blesses me unexpectedly. How can that be? He’s dead, after all. The quality of the soul is eternal; it is able to reach down into hearts on earth that feel quite alone. And his soul is tending mine like you wouldn’t believe. It reminds me that he never was anything but supportive of my writing, that he asked me to find my passion before he died (and writing was it). It surrounds me with this house he paid for and the son we raised together. And when I cry a diamond tear, it is often because of his undying love.

For you readers who follow my essays, I express my tenderness in these little notes written without a certain someone coming in to look over my shoulder. But then again, who knows? I would like to think that when I married a six foot four inch Georgia Tech man who thought a slide rule was interesting, I knew what I was doing. I didn’t, for no one ever knows what deals are being struck. I used to think if I had known he would die such a terrible death, I wouldn’t have married him. But in reality there is no such luxury of choice. And since I am on the path of awakening, I now know that love lies far above the realm of choice.

Saying “I do” is not something a twenty-something does consciously. When he came to me in a dream and said to me, “Your prayers are written on the wall of my heart every day,” I realized what our marriage had been about. It was about coming to terms with what love really is. It is something we are, and in the last analysis, is better off undefiled by the ego’s touch. Those glasses I washed are now in a box of his things that I have saved. But the eye that looked on me with love is the one that is also on the sparrow. Tenderness, who doesn’t need some? It comes in small things, not large. It lingers in the heart, expanding it to infinity. It says “I love you” in ways that defy logic. And that’s a good thing.

Vicki Woodyard