passing

I do not weep
for the bird that died,
she sings in skies
far more beautiful
than our own.

Rather,
I weep for those
she left behind,
who can no longer
hear her song.

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When I heard this morning that President Hinckley had died, I thought first of the loss that all of us have suffered today. We are deprived of the example and gentle guidance of an exemplary man. His death at any age means that humanity has lost one of her jewels.

But my following thought was both less and more selfish at the same time. Yesterday he was here on earth without his wife and sweetheart. Today he is not.

I thought of myself, on a snowy, wet February night nine years ago. Jess and I were walking the sidewalks of residential Provo, aimless and giddy from a marriage proposal just made and accepted. We were wet through our coats and shoes from hours’ worth of walking in the slush, but of course we couldn’t feel it. We were giggling over the idea that my children would call him “Daddy” and how funny my name would sound when my name was his. The idea of a life spent growing comfortable and used to each other was beginning to sink in, when another idea came to both of us at the same time.

The giddiness was replaced by dread as we realized an old, old truth. That we would spend our lives together, yes, lives that in decades would become so intertwined that they would begin to feel like one life. That we would share so much that it would be pointless to discuss ownership, children that would look like both of us, experiences we could recall with a word. We realized then that we would spend our lives laughing together, crying together, praying and arguing and learning together, and that one day, one of us would die.

And the other would be left, to plan the funeral, try numbly to comfort the children, and stand in the rain, lost, while they put the earthly remains of our common soul in the ground. The other would be left to figure out how to continue to live for whatever amount of time remained until we could be reunited.

When we realized this yawning, horrible truth, our first reaction was to say, “Oh, I hope it’s not you that goes first.” And then, recoiling from the selfishness of such a hope, “Oh, I hope it’s not me.”

I heard President Hinckley talk about Sister Hinckley’s hands several years before her death. He said they used to be smooth and limber, but now they were wrinkled and stiff. They were more beautiful to him now, he said, than they were when they were young. I heard him years later, speaking about her after her death. He said there was a great sadness for him that nothing could erase. It was a simple statement, and he didn’t dwell on it, but in it I heard the sorrow that all of us will face.

As I try to craft my life and marriage in a world full of misinformation, deceit, and divorce, I am thankful for examples like the life and marriage of President and Sister Hinckley. When Jess and I are old, I want us to be like them, holding our wrinkled hands together and thinking how beautiful they are. When one of us is called to leave the other here alone, I hope that the remaining one can go on with as much faith and hope as he did. And I hope, with every scrap of my soul, that today President Hinckley has joined hands again with his sweetheart, both hands made young again, because I hope that someday I can too.