S. Michael Wilcox's shares lessons on love after wife's passing

Editor's note: Retired institute instructor and award-winning author S. Michael Wilcox shares what he learned about love as he cared for his wife and dealt with her passing.

After losing my wife to cancer, I had to learn to live, love, and grieve all at the same time. I'm still learning to feel my way without her physically beside me, but I am learning more of the deeper meaning of eternal love.

Love is a redeeming emotion and grief is loves shadow. I am now living in that shadow, the diminished light cast upon me by the death of my wife a short eight months ago. These have been days of pain and, yes, fear and questioning, but also of profound love felt in previously undiscovered depths of my soul.

I kept a small notebook near me during my wifes battle with cancer and her eventual passing. I tried to record what I was learning about living and loving and grieving. I did not initially intend it for publication but was reminded that we are under divine injunction to mourn with those who mourn and offer what comforts we can. To that end, and by way of tribute to the woman I love, I wrote the book Sunset, my own passage through the landscape of a loved ones passing, desiring that it might lift others who share the path with me or who will one day find themselves on our road, hoping someone left a few signposts to help them find their way. Grief is a searching, desiring emotion. It is the hearts hunger the soul reaching out to the limits of mortalitys boundaries.

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