July 15th
The day came like any other—ordinary, with tasks to do, people to care for, and the regular responsibilities of life. It arrived silently, calmly. Nothing extraordinary took place. It came without acknowledgment, not that any was needed. And just as the day began, it ended, and another one started.
For most people, July 15th is just another ordinary day.
But for one widow, it marked 20 years of love—10 together and 10 apart.
As my grief has aged alongside me, I see it through a very different lens. I was the only one holding this day in my heart and mind. Just as now, I am the only one of the two of us who can recount the love we celebrated on the day we said, “I do.”
It was our day.
I didn’t feel the need to talk about it, proclaim it, or post about it. In some quiet, secret way, I wanted it to remain mine. Because he was mine, and this day was about our love. That felt like the right way to honor it.
No tears. No special event. No public mention.
There simply wasn’t a need.
As one of my favorite passages—read at our wedding—says:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated,
it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury,
it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth.
It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.”
And what I have gleaned through my years of widowhood falls a lot onto the verse I quoted above. My late husband’s death and the grief I carry are not mine alone to bear. For so many years, I felt responsible for keeping every memory alive, afraid that if I didn’t hold tightly enough, somehow parts of him would be lost. It was a heavy burden, one rooted more in fear than in love.
Time has taught me something different. Love does not ask us to cling. It asks us to trust. The life we shared cannot be erased by the passing of time, nor is it measured by how vividly I remember every detail. It lives on in the people we loved, in our children, in the person I became because I loved him, and in the quiet ways his life still shapes mine.
Grief has softened over the years. It has become less about what was taken from me and more about what was given to me. I can now look back with gratitude instead of only longing. The pain of losing him will always be part of my story, but it is no longer the whole story.
So this July 15th came and went like any other day. And somehow, that felt fitting. Because love was never meant to exist only in milestones or anniversaries. It is found in ordinary days—in the quiet faithfulness of a heart that still gives thanks for what once was.
Twenty years after we said, “I do,” and ten years after I said goodbye, I know this much to be true:
Love never fails.
