Sometimes one meets a husband and wife whose love for each other is so real that other people do not see them so much as two individuals, but, rather, as one unit. It’s almost as if they have been fused together by their years of sharing with and caring for each other. To imagine one without the other is impossible.
Mr. Josef David and Mrs. Miriam David were a couple just like that. They were of medium height, good looking and inseparable. Every day they would come to the village synagogue to pray, and would stand chatting to their friends. They would go back home and Mr. Josef would work in his carpentry. He would also look after the garden of the widow who lived next door. I think he was actually older than Mrs. Miriam, but Mr. Josef was determined that she wasn’t going to tire herself out. A perfect gentleman, he hated the thought of a woman doing hard labour!
Mr. and Mrs. Davids loved each other so much that sometimes I wondered how they even managed to be apart when he had had to go to work in various distant villages and towns. At least now that he had retired, they could be together all the time.
Then came the day when Mr. Josef died. His wife still came to village synagogue every day. She tried to help the widow, next door, did the gardening for her as Mr. Josef once did. She spoke about her late husband as though he had been the most loveable man who had ever lived. Mr. Josef had been perfect in every way, according to his wife.
When once the widow’s son, would come home to visit his mother, Mrs. Miriam would use his arrival as an excuse to visit him along with her son Jeshua. One evening she came to the house with a big plastic bag that she put on the floor beside the boy. One by one she pulled out photographs of his husband and showed them to him. Some of the pictures had been treasured for years. After the photos came the fret works that Mr. Josef had done during the many years of their married life. As she showed off his husband’s handiwork, it was clear that Mrs. Miriam was finding comfort in being able to talk about the man she had loved so much. There were moments when she was finding it hard not to cry. It was a very sacred evening as far as this widow’s son was concerned. For a short time he had been allowed to enter into a marriage that had truly been made in Heaven.
When two people love each other very much and one dies, it can feel as though the surviving partner has lost everything. Mrs. Miriam’s whole world was centred in her husband. He was his sun and his stars. When he died, life could never again be the same. If she hadn’t had her strong faith Mrs. Miriam’s world would have come to an end.
As Christians we are very blessed in knowing that death is not the end of everything. The only thing that makes sense of death is our belief in the Resurrection, our belief that death is only a transition. We believe that, beyond the grave is life. Death is not the end. When someone dies, that person is only a thought away, can never move further away from us than deep inside our hearts. Today, 19 March, as we remember St. Joseph we pray for all those whom we love and who have died. We pray that God will give them the fullness of life and peace with him. Today let us also pray for those husbands and wives who have been separated by death, that God will give comfort and strength to the one left behind.
