Famine shows itself in many figurative forms. You can be starved of many things besides food.

And “fair” is just the place where you buy cotton candy.

Life is not fair and, because of that, I’m starving. I’m not hungry, no. But I am starving for the life I had with my husband. Call it metaphor or an analogy but I’m going to staunchly maintain that it fits. This feeling goes beyond “missing him;” it’s just bigger, broader, more all-encompassing, more saturating than just “missing him.” This condition is deadly without intervention, exactly like starving.

Let me put it another way.

I keep reading that grief is the price you pay for love. I guess someone feels like that makes it all better. Grief is also proportionate to intensity of love. My sister and I LOVED our Granny and our stepdad VERY much and were oh-so-sad when they left. But my sister’s grief over her son and my grief over my husband is bigger. Your husband and your children are essential pieces to every part of your life. They are an integral and necessary cog in the clockwork of everything you do or plan to do in life. Take one of those cogs away and, well, let’s just say duct tape won’t fix it. You have to rebuild the entire inside of the clock to work in a different fashion if it is ever to keep time again. You have to painstakingly find a new place for every single cog and figure out how to make it a part of the working timepiece, how to make all of them turn and work together. It’s exhausting and it takes forever.

My cogs, springs, screws, other random pieces are scattered about all around me. Every time I try to fit two of them together, the teeth on the cogs don’t match up. It feels as if I will never find a way to make all of the wheels turn properly again. Typically, if this happens to your clock, you return it to where you bought it. I don’t want to do that. I LOVED this clock when it was working properly, when all the pieces were as they should be. I don’t want to go back and trade this clock for a different one. I just want this one to work again. The problem is, they no longer make the missing piece. So now I have to find a way to put it back together without it. To do that I’m going to need an expert clockmaker.

Since God is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, He knows everything there is to know about time and about how to keep clocks running. The thing is, I’m scared to turn it over to Him. My clock is already broken and seems to be beyond repair. What if I send it off and it just gets lost? What if I give it to Him and find out that it truly is broken beyond repair and there is nothing anyone can do about making it tick again? What if, just like my engagement ring that was too big when I got it, I just don’t want to let go of it long enough for it to be fixed for me? I want to hold on to all of my own pieces that I do have left because I don’t want anything to happen to the ones that are left.

But then I’ll still just be sitting here with a broken clock. What good is a clock that doesn’t keep time? It becomes just a bauble, a knock knack. It just sits there and never does anything ever again. That’s not really what I want for my clock. I want it to work again because I’ll feel better if it does.

And yet I feel guilty for even trying to get the clock working without that essential piece. Maybe it shouldn’t ever work again. Maybe it was meant to only be functional when that specific piece was in place. Maybe that one cog was so important that it will always keep the time wrong, too slow or too fast or in the wrong time zone, if it is ever repaired to work again.

The Clockmaker. I have to give it to the Clockmaker. I’ve got to make a decision to send it off to Him, give it up in order to get it back in working order.

Uggghhhh, but I still just can’t.

I’ll keep trying. I’ll get a box to send it in, pay the postage, and just keep trying to send it out.

One of these days, I’ll be able to step close enough to the mailbox to put it in. One of these days, it will work again.