Bad News, the Good News, and Easter

Just a silly little late-night couch selfie from my phone! Not very flattering of me, but I love his smile and sparkly eyes. So much love here.

So I don’t know how to start this. I don’t know how to breathe or be or live anymore. My amazing boyfriend, Jason Cuadro, suddenly passed away 2 weeks ago from a pulmonary embolism. We were getting ready to go to church on a Sunday morning. It is so weird to say this. It is so weird that this is my story now. I don’t know how a person continues on without all of that love, so very much love, in their life. I guess I will have to learn.
So this is the bad news. The very, very, very bad news.
The worst news.

I guess something like this is what you wear to your boyfriend’s funeral. To the death of your future as you knew it. A black dress, black tights, black shoes, a black veil. And I think you carry his teddy bear and I think you smile sometimes because there are only so many tears for a day, only so many tears for a moment, before you run dry and after that I guess you smile a little with sad eyes and unbelief in your heart so you don’t die even more inside, too. And because for some reason someone is taking a picture of you at a funeral and that’s just so weird. I don’t know.

But God. 

Easter has been speaking to my heart. Easter has been soaking into me. 

God is still God, still God on the throne when Jesus was on the Cross. Still God on the throne when Jesus was in the grave on Saturday. Still God on the throne, today, when my heart is a black hole and the future looks like endless night, HE IS STILL GOD. I believe that. I wholeheartedly believe that. 

If it were not for Easter, and if it were not for that hope that I have, that I know my Jason had, we would be hopeless. We would be without cause to hope.  I cannot imagine going through a loss like this without the assurance that we serve a LIVING God, and thereby, we WILL see each other again, some glorious day. Some grand, glorious day, when we are all home.

I guess even when it snows on Easter, and your eyes are still puffy and the only thing you want is a hand to hold in yours and to hear his voice, you still put on your giant vintage daisy earrings and go to church.

Still wear the Easter skirt he picked out for you weeks ago, because you know he would have wanted to see you in it. Still make the wreath you bought the supplies for the night before he died, when you finally have a little bit of grit to get out of bed after 2 weeks, because you know it would make him smile. 

“Because HE lives, I can face tomorrow.” 

and I guess you just keep trusting. Because God knew this was a part of my story from the beginning of time. And God was gracious enough to give me 2 years of the most amazing love ever known. For that, I can be grateful. To leave that love in death, to leave that love in anxiety and fear and to crawl into a hole like I want to would be to say it was all counterfeit.

For that, I can go on, carrying the love and life for both of us, forward. 

Into light. 

with all my love and sorrow, 

Natalie