Throughout my life and career, I was viewed as a strong person—and, candidly, that’s how I saw myself. I watched both parents die following terrible terminal illnesses; I dealt with myriad difficult issues as a college president; I endured the first degree murder trial of my husband; and, I survived a serious disease and watched my husband struggle through three life-threatening illnesses. During those experiences, I stood strong, trusting God to help me through the dark days of my life. And, during the first few days after my husband’s death, even though I sobbed with abandon when I was alone, I showed strength as I went through the motions of preparing for his memorial service and even held my emotions in check when I stood before his friends and family to deliver a loving tribute. But when the busyness of the first few days ended, my strength evaporated into nothingness.

Suddenly, I felt alone in a way I had never felt before. I couldn’t focus—even when I was among others, I felt like I was enveloped in a bubble. I no longer felt a part of the world that was spinning around me as if nothing had happened. While everyone else went about the routines of their lives, my world stood still. Half of me was gone, never to return. A quote by Mary Todd Lincoln described exactly how I felt: “Tell me, how can I live without my husband any longer? This is my first awakening thought each morning, and as I watch the waves of the turbulent lake under our windows, I sometimes feel I should like to go under them.”

After months of despair, I thought I was condemned to sit and stare vacantly into space until I joined my husband in the next dimension. My faith no longer offered “peace that passeth understanding.” Basic religious tenets that had held me in good stead in the past no longer sufficed. I wanted concrete answers about what happens at the moment of death—I wanted to know exactly what my husband experienced. But then I faced the fact that no one knows—even great theologians haven’t experienced death and returned to tell us what the transition to the next world was like.

After struggling for months, I came to accept that my human mind would never understand infinity--but what I could see with my eyes was a magnificent world design being flawlessly executed in cycles of birth, life, and death.I decided if the creator has a scheme for a tulip, then surely the plan for a human after life on this earth is extinguished must be much more intricate and beautiful. I may not understand how the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but I know they do. And just as a tulip is reborn each spring, my husband has risen to a new life--and someday I will make the same journey and see him once again.