26. The Period.

"It has been said that time heals all wounds.  The truth is that time does not heal anything.  It merely passes.  It is what we do during the passage of time that helps or hinders the healing process." 

~Jay Marshall

I'm done - done with my first year of law school.  It's strange, though - I don't have that euphoric feeling I expected to feel after finally completing something I originally started six long years ago.  Now that it's over, the hustle and bustle of the semester when I always had too much to do and not enough time to do it almost seems preferable to what remains in the sudden silence at the end of the day.  As I celebrated with the rest of my classmates, I silently raised my glass in honor of the man who got me through this past year and who represents the single source of inspiration for everything I do.  I wanted more than anything to be able to look across the table into Jon's eyes and clink my glass with his...but instead, I dug deep, put a smile on my face, and drank a toast to completing two more years of law school.  When, God willing, I finally earn my degree at what they call "hooding ceremony," Jon had better make sure he gives me a little push to walk across that stage because I have no idea how I'm going to be able do it without him.


At church last week, my pastor spoke about punctuation.  It probably sounds like a pretty unconventional topic for a sermon, but he, ingeniously, found a way to connect six different kinds of punctuation to the various ways in which religion plays a part in our day-to-day lives...if we let it.  He spoke about the asterisk and how it signifies that, even after a bad chapter, there is more to our story.  There is hope for a better future.  He spoke about the carrot and how it points up towards God to remind us of where to seek guidance when we are confronted with challenges that test our will and our patience.  And he spoke about the period, which signifies forgiveness.  He said it means putting an end to the anger we carry around inside us towards those who have caused us unnecessary pain.  When I looked at that period up there on the big screen, all I could think about was the end - the end of life, the end of happiness. It's just a tiny dot on a piece of paper, but it looks so final, so ominous.  It suddenly seemed like a very appropriate symbol for how my life has often felt since I lost Jon.  In Scotland, where I was born, they call the period a "full stop."  That's exactly what it's like, I thought:  a full stop to the life I thought I'd live, a full stop to all my hopes and dreams for the future that died with Jon.  On the day Jon left this world, it was as if someone put a full stop to my blissful ignorance and naivete and, in one fell swoop, dumped the harsh realities of life on me in the worst of all possible ways.


I know deep down in my heart, though, that Jon would never have wanted his death to represent a period in mine.  He told me that if the unthinkable ever happened, he would want me to go on in life and find love again.  Well, after the last few years, I'm not sure that I can contemplate venturing down that road again.  But maybe, just maybe, there's still more to my story.  Maybe my period is really more like an asterisk and I just have to be patient for when I'm allowed to jump to the bottom of the page to find out what happens next.  Maybe I need to remind myself to look up, like the carrot, and ask for help a little more often when the days are hard, the nights are long, and reality starts to weigh heavily on my shoulders.  Maybe the period represents a full stop to some things, but not to everything.  And maybe, for now at least, I can add a couple of dots...and make my period into an ellipsis.