As I struggle through this excruciating pain of losing my soulmate, the love of my life, I try to make sense of all of this. The how and the why his life was taken so quickly. He was always so healthy and active before this horrible tragedy.  He was only 73 years old and still working a hard physical job on his feet 8 hours a day lifting heavy sheets of arborite and other materials that he would precisely saw to order in the cabinet shop for the company he worked for that built manufactured housing. He’d get up 5 am every morning and travel an hour and back regardless of the weather.  He did not sit at a desk in front of a screen and keyboard.

He did not showed any signs of any kind of illness to speak of. He always took good care of himself. He was careful about what he put into his body. He was an avid label reader when he’d go to the grocery store. He took various vitamins and supplements and was always very active. Even his oral health he was very particular about spending quite a bit of time each night brushing and cleaning his mouth and always made sure he kept his dental check ups and cleanings up to date.  So why him? Why did this happen to a man who was so diligent about his health?

He had hardly a sick day all the years I have known and loved him except for the odd cold and flu that we all get from time to time and not once in all those years of working did he ever miss a day of work because of sickness.

I tried to think if there was something, anything that we missed. Sometimes I blame myself. How come I didn’t sense that something was wrong early on?  A good wife should be able to sense when something is not right with her husband. How could I miss something as serious as pancreatic cancer? Maybe if we could have caught it early enough to do something about it and my husband could still be here with me but was there anything that could be done?

The only thing I can think of  was a week or two before the stroke, he had some pain in his shoulder and feet but we tacked up to the usual aches and pains one endures as they get older. Something that happens to everyone as they get up in years. You know the achy joints etc.

Chester a good man. A decent man. A good son, a good brother, a good husband,a good father and grandfather.  A man who loved and believed that Jesus is his Lord and Savior. Why did something like this have to happen to him? Out of the blue and so fast?

I struggle everyday with these questions I may never find  the answers to but I will keep asking these questions. But really what good is it?   In the end it doesn’t really change what happened.   In the mean time the pain  I endure from being separated from my love is almost unbearable sometimes I can barely hold on. But I have to remember as a believer in Jesus Christ that we live in a fallen world and that we will go through tribulations.  It’s hard though. Extremely hard.The hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through. My stomach still hurts. I wait for the day when I am reunited with the man I love and to see my Lord face to face in heaven to spend all eternity there with them. I have to hang on to that even though nothing makes sense to me right now. I have to look to God’s word for comfort to rely on or I may drive myself crazy.

John 16:33 King James Version (KJV)

³³ These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.