Missing my Beloved

For the past week, my sweet husband has been in Turkey.  The computers are having issues in the Istanbul office so they called in the Computer Guy.  (Doesn’t that make him sound like a super hero?)

It was his first time out of the country, other than college trips across the border but that doesn’t count when you’re from South Texas, and my first time to have him so very far away.  While he’s been gone for a week or more in the past, there’s a difference in his being a 14 hour plane ride away, literally on the other side of the planet.

I thought I was doing a decent job of holding it together, although it has made blogging hard since I promised not to write that he was gone and it’s all I wanted to write about, until late last night.  I had one of those pregnancy dreams.  No, not the wake-up-with-a-smile-and-a-certain-glow kind of dreams, the other kind.

I dreamed that he left us.  He stood right in front of me and said he was done, it was over and that he was leaving.  I awoke in a complete panic which only intensified as I realized he wasn’t in bed with me.  I ran out into the living room and called his name and he didn’t answer, at which point I collapsed on the floor sobbing.  Where was he?  How could he leave?

Then I woke all the way up and remembered….Turkey.  He’s in Turkey.  I talked to him yesterday, and he’ll be heading for the airport and home in just a few hours.  I peeled myself off the floor and headed back to bed to attempt to calm my rapidly thudding heart.

As I lay there clutching my pillow, I realized that I don’t tell him often enough what he means to me.  We are years past the excited blush of new love and sappy endearments.  We long ago reached a place of quiet companionship and deep love and affection.  There are so many words which no longer need to be said out loud.  We communicate them silently with a certain smile, that knowing glint in the eye or a million other non-verbal gestures which only we understand.

But I don’t tell him.  I never say that I love him with all of me, that the thought of his not being here leaves me completely undone.  The crying last night was not mere grief, it was more primal than that.  He has become a part of my very being, the way the readings at our wedding promised but I didn’t believe was possible at a naive 21.

There is God, and then there is my beloved.  Everything I have and love comes from these two loves, and I don’t tell either one that nearly enough.