Burial Ground
My wife and I attended the funeral of a very sweet lady today. She lived a long life of service to the Lord, and kind deeds and words unto all who knew her. Her life and passage into its next phase gave me reason to consider the parallels of life and death within a relationship.
Joy and pain, happiness and remorse, good times and arguments.
Prior to the funeral, my wife and I spent approximately five hours arguing about a wide range of faults and inconsistencies. It was as heated as we have argued in a long time, heated without yelling and screaming, which was a good thing.
We eventually finished up the fight around 5:00 A.M., with an approximate wake up time of 8:0O A.M. to prepare for the funeral. Everybody out there that argues with a loved knows that you really don’t sleep well with an argument not having a resolution, so you’re probably talking three hours of shut-eye between us.
But when we woke up, bleary-eyed and wary of each other’s feelings and intentions for the day, we some how managed to hash things out. In a fraction of the time it took us to pridefully boast about what we don’t do wrong and how right we are, the short words of “I’m sorry,” and “I was wrong” buried the anxiety borne in the midnight hour.
Just like that.
And that’s how life is. You spend so many years building towards these professional, social and spiritual goals, with disappointments and failures along the way. You struggle, shed tears and second-guess yourself all along the way.
And then one day, it’s all over. Gone in an instant. Everybody else is stuck with the memories good and bad, and the results of how you governed yourself.
When we argue, we don’t forget the terms, the tone or the time it takes to get to a place of understanding. But when we decide its time to bury the hatchet, it’s over in a flash. Each of us is left with the result of the fighting, but we’re willing to leave that result six feet under to rejoice about time well spent.
Knowing that you don’t have much time to do as much as you can, a true sign of relationship maturity is making the most of the fleeting period of love and happiness. They buoy us in times of hardships, and provided the burial ground for our less-than-favorable moments.