My parents had been married for 55 years. One morning my mom walked down the stairs to make breakfast for my dad but during this trivial domestic routine, she clutched her chest and collapsed.

Sensing something unusual, my dad picked Mom up and somehow got her into their family car. Shaking with exhaustion and anxiety, he rushed Mom to the hospital while driving at the maximum speed. Unfortunately, she was no longer with us when he arrived at the hospital.

During the funeral, my father did not utter a word; his gaze was empty. He almost didn’t even cry. We kids came to spend the night with him.

Throughout the long and melancholic evening and in an atmosphere of nostalgic pain, we remembered beautiful stories. During our murmured nocturnes Father asked my brother, a theologian, to tell me where Mom is now.

My brother started talking about the afterlife and made suggestions on how and where her soul might be now. During my brother’s spoken thoughts my father was listening very carefully. Then suddenly he asked us to take him to the graveyard.

‘Papa,’ we answered, ‘It is now 11 pm. We can’t go to the graveyard now at such a late hour.’

Dad replied in a raised voice and with a distant look: ‘Don’t argue with me. Don’t argue with a man who has lost his wife of 55 years! There was a moment of respectful silence and we were no longer arguing with him.

As a small and silent group, we went to the cemetery where with the aid of a flashlight we found Mom’s last resting place.

Then, my father sat down, prayed, and said to his children, ‘We were 55 years together… do you understand?’ No one should talk about true love unless they have lived life with someone special.

Dad then became silent and as he thought of Mom, he wiped away his tears. ‘We were with together through thick and thin,’ he sighed.

‘When I changed jobs, we packed up everything and moved out after selling the house. We shared their joy when our kids became parents. Together we cried over loved ones who left this world and together as a couple we prayed in the waiting rooms of the hospital. We supported each other in hard times; we hugged each other every day and we forgave each other’s mistakes.’

Then he became silent for a moment and added: ‘Children, it’s all over and I’m happy tonight. Do you know why I’m happy? I am happy because Mom left this world before I did.’

‘She didn’t have to go through the agony and the pain of burying me and then suffered loneliness alone after I passed. I’m the one who has to experience it all and I’m telling God about it. I love her so much I don’t want her to suffer.’

When my father had finished speaking, tears were rolling down our cheeks. We hugged him and he comforted us:

‘Everything is fine. Well, we can go home. This was a good day. Tonight, I realized what true love is. It’s more than romance and sex. True love is when two people stand by each other, being faithful to each other through thick and thin throughout their lives. May peace be in your hearts.’

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QUOTES TO REMEMBER. ‘I am fully convinced that the soul is indestructible and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which, to our eyes, seems to set at night; but it has in reality only gone to diffuse its light elsewhere.’ ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

‘He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another.’ ~ Herman Hesse 1877-1962.

‘Remember man, as you go, as you are so now once was I, as I am now so shall you be, prepare yourself to follow me.’

Michael Walsh: ‘You are not going on your own and nor will you be on your own. You are and always will be in just the other room. We will follow you. We will join you after our fleeting mortality, which is only a passing thing for a purpose; that is all.’

MIKE WALSH Irish ‘Writer of the Year’ author of over 70 books all of which are banned in the West. In 1979, the tell-it-as-it-is historian received multiple fines and arrests including 6 x 4-month prison sentences for publishing flyers that correctly predicted the negative consequences of non-European immigration. CONTACT MIKE WALSH euroman_uk@yahoo.co.uk ~ ~ IF YOU LIKE THIS AND OTHER STORIES PLEASE CONSIDER A DONATION TO HELP US MAKE ENDS MEET ~ ~

You are not the first to return to the in-between life and you will not be the last. Here or there is an irrelevancy. We remain together as a link, the link that you made in a chain that mortality cannot break.

The mortal loss is temporary, togetherness is eternal. There is no such thing as finality, only transformation, which is to be welcomed as without it we cannot experience immortality.’ HELP US TO REACH OUT BY SHARING ON TWITTER AND SOCIAL MEDIA