She was waiting at the end of the dock for my return.
After weeks of having painstakingly repaired my single fiberglass rowing shell following a collision with a large metal buoy, I could not resist the beckoning call of a beautiful sunset over the glass-like surface of the lake.
“Just a couple miles sweetheart and I’ll be back.”
It would be five miles as it turned out, the joy of being back out on the water overcoming any concerns that darkness had long since descended.
I rowed on, the little blinking bow light warning anyone else of my approach.
But there was no one out there. Just me.
Finally, I turned for home, and she was there, waiting.
That chair is now empty.
“There is no safe investment,” wrote C.S. Lewis in his book The Four Loves.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.”
Like mine.
The one who was always there waiting for me – awake when I returned home late from a meeting to ask how it went, or to read to her another chapter in our fictional romance series in which we had fallen in love – has gone on ahead.
Where she is waiting for me to return home.
David quotes C.S. Lewis:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken.”
Lewis goes on to observe, sadly:
“The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.”