Farewell My Beloved

As a Marriage and wife coach, I take an oath of confidentiality.  Period.  The other day, one of my beautiful wives (“standing” for husband), shared the poem below. I was blown away that she had reflected and written such vibrant words to describe her pain. Massive pain of letting her husband go during her time of crisis.  Today her husband is very much alive and still having an affair.

Please note that I have never shared anything about one of the wives I am coaching. However the woman who wrote the below is so full of faith and just so raw and truthful, that I asked if I could share this with my readers.  She said yes and with that I’m going to post it below.  She also said I could share her name.  But after typing this today, I’m just going to share her initial and last name.  Maybe when time has passed, and she has approved, I will add her full name.

If you are reading this perhaps your husband too is having an affair or is gone.  Maybe this will bring some peace as you are not alone in your journey.  So many who come here are in your situation.

To the eyes that read this page…please know, you are thought of often and you are loved.

“Farewell My Beloved”
Written by Mrs. S. Perry

I come to you today to celebrate the life of a wonderful husband, father, and friend. Every morning he rose to kiss me on the forehead, sat beside the bed as I lay, held me in his arms, to wish me well for the day. Most every anniversary, he’d paint me a beautiful painting of things I loved, like butterflies. He gave me the universe. Sun, stars, Earth, and moon. He was a good father to two wonderful daughters. He put them first in everything he did. He would often tell strangers, employers, and friends alike that he worked and lived to provide for his family, his two adoring daughters. His love for them radiating through them. He was a true friend, full of laughter, light of heart, witty and abundantly joyful.

One early spring, he became gravely ill. The illness was a silent killer, not of the body, but of mind, will, and spirit. We do not know exactly when this illness took hold of him or why it befell him. From June through the fall and into the early winter, we fought this mysterious illness. His words became full of rage and bitterness. His tender touches replaced by deep wounds and unfathomable pain. His radiant soul giving way to bleakness. His youthful body ashen.

I am ashamed to say that I, his loving wife, did not see the signs until it was too late. I showered upon him all the love I could. I cried, pleaded, and beg to God, to help me save his life. I took every admonishment that came from him and carried it as my own cross. I thought my love for him, my guilt, and my shame could be the blood transfusion that stopped this terrible disease. Sadly, in the latter days of December, he succumbed to this illness and I have been living with the ghost of the man that I once loved.

I held onto his body throughout the remainder of the winter and into this spring unable to bury him, for my love for him could not bear to think that he could ever leave me. As he lay cold before me, I persisted that he was alive. I carried his lifeless body with me everywhere that I went. I dragged him with me to the grocery store, to pick up the children, into the shower, and I sat his body in a chair at the dining room table. The ghost of the man I once loved savoring every meal prepared before him.

I placed him the passenger seat of the car on my way to work, and every time the car swerved left or right, his body would lean, and I would swear he was alive. When a gentle breeze would blow and the hairs on his beard would bristle, I would profess that he was smiling at me. Each morning I arose with new hope and came to his body trying to breathe new life into him. His chest rising and cresting from the gushes of air, of my own life, that I was forcing into him. My lips yearning to press against the ghost of the man that I once loved.

And even when his corpse was decaying right before my eyes, the putrid smell too much to bear for all who you who were loving me through this, I could not…I would not let go. I could only smell the scent of his cologne as he dressed in the morning, the coffee on his breath as he left the house for work, the sweet musk of his sweat after a long day, the smell of his skin after we’d make love. And I persisted at heaving him along. Arms outstretched to embrace the ghost of the man that I once loved.

Each morning brushing my teeth, in the mirror a reflection of unworthiness and self-loathing stared me down. Makeup perfect, clothing impeccable, but smile devoid of joy, body slimmed and aching in labor as to give birth to a stillborn child. As I trace the lipstick across my mouth, to my right draped across the vanity chair lay the decaying corpse and behind me in the mirror stood the ghost of the man I once loved.

Back broken, arms in atrophy, legs buckled, on the edge of insanity, I can hold no longer to the ghost of the man that I once loved. The weight of his decaying body pressing me into the earth. Clutching to the ghost of the man I once loved, squeezing tightly the carcass of self-destruction. In the yearning eyes of my daughters, I see the sickness of self, that took my beloved, infecting me. It makes me yearn to join him, leaving in its wake a trail of tears for my daughters to follow. It isolates me from the One who has been carrying me through this all along, urging me to come to him. His hand has been outstretched offering a new dawn, but my arms have been holding on tightly to the corpse. The ghost of the man I once loved, obscuring my vision.

And so today my friends, I lay at the altar his body and release the spirit of man I once loved to our creator. I know that my own work here is not yet done. Only One has and can resurrect what has died. So, I lay down my cross, shed the armor around my heart, dust the dirt off my feet, and take the hand of true unconditional love. 

Farwell my beloved and be well…and should we be destined to meet again, I will rejoice and give praise for as it was in the beginning, it is the end. I was given a great gift to have the heart to love unconditionally then and I will again.

UPDATE:As of today – January 2022…the writer of this letter (my beautiful client I coached for almost 2 years) is in a great place with her husband.She is celebrating his birthday soon and all is great.Why? Because she stayed the course. She did not give up.She stood tall and refused to let her family implode.

xoxo