I spent the late hours of this evening with an old friend.
My friend and I had gone to medical school together.
His wife of 25 years died 3 months ago.
My friend came into town for a convention and looks surprisingly good given the circumstances.
The love of his life had been the person that was his perfect compliment.
They had met in high school and despite the challenges of being young, despite disapproving families, despite coming from completely different backgrounds and religions, their relationship had thrived.
My friend's wife handled everything that he always claimed he was inept at doing.
She matched clothing for him, picked out justthe right gifts for their friends at the holidays, planned social gatherings and drew an ever expanding universe of friends into their life.
Similarly he handled everything that she found difficult; planning trips, creating opportunities, keeping the peace among the extended family.
She died a horrific death from widely spread breast cancer at only 41 years of age.
She suffered every complication of both her disease and her treatments.
Over the final six years of her life she suffered every indignity without ever losing her dignity.
She died twice in that six years before finally dying for the last time.
My friend had little time to grieve her loss before tragedy became catastrophe as their oldest child suffered a life threatening illness and complications from the ensuing emergency surgery.
As my friend sat at his child's bedside, he found himself writing Thank You notes to those who had attended his wife's funeral, over 500 of them.
He said, "I've become a woman, every note was personalized.
I've never known how to do that, she always did it for me and now that she is gone, I've become a woman.
" I sat and listened to him describe who he finds that for the first time in his life he can match clothing, cook, writing heartfelt letters, buy "just the right gift" and even wrap it.
All things she used to do for him.
I marveled at my friend and how resilient he had become because of his relationship with his wife.
Even after her death, their relationship had been so full and without regret that it continued to be the source of his resilience even after she had died.
Those of us who knew them, always knew him as the "peace maker" and her as the one who "took lemons and made lemonade.
" In their life together, he had imprinted patterns of behavior and skills that he never appreciated until she was no longer there.
These dormant patterns suddenly became active behaviors when he needed them.
These patterns are a tangible manifestation of his Relationship Resilience.
I spent four hours reminiscing with my friend, reliving their last vacation together and their last days.
Before I picked him up I contemplated how to tell him that after loving her so completely for so many years that it was OK to move on with his life, to be a father, to be a doctor, to be single and perhaps even to find someone new to love.
Much to my joy, I found that through the life and relationship they had shared, she had done this last thing for him.
They had loved without regret and become so much a part of one another that he will have her with him always as he move forward in life and drinks deeply of his Relationship Resilience.