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" My heart is bleeding today. A very dear friend of mine just lost his wife of twenty-three years very suddenly. They&amp;#039;ve been together since they were young, and he lost her way too early. Believe me when I tell you that he never would have felt he had enough time with her, even if she&amp;#039;d lived to be a hundred. She was a very gentle soul, and he wrote of her often in one of the online communities that I frequent. His adoration for her was apparent, even overly-indulgent at times, but we all read his posts about her over the years, about their life together, and we all said &amp;quot;Yeah, that&amp;#039;s the kind of love I want to have.&amp;quot; He was a lucky man, and he knew it. She was his rock, and now he probably feels like he&amp;#039;s been thrown against the rocks. I wish I could offer more than heartsickness and long-distance support. Luckily, he&amp;#039;s got a wonderful family, and her equally wonderful family, and they&amp;#039;re surrounding him and holding him up until he feels like he can walk again. I feel so selfish and petty now when I come on here and whine about Peter saying or doing something that hurts my feelings. I was going to post today that he&amp;#039;s in Jamaica with his girlfriend this week while I&amp;#039;m trying to figure out how much money I&amp;#039;ll have for gas, now that prices have gone up. So miniscule. So meaningless in the greater scheme of things. Life can turn on a dime, and that&amp;#039;s when you realize how very much you do have, really. Peter and I aren&amp;#039;t together anymore, but if something happened to him, there would be hole blown through my life, and the lives of my children that I cannot even begin to comprehend. If we were still together, still the &amp;quot;we&amp;quot; that we once used to be...how do you recover from that? And how would it change you to have to live it? I just can&amp;#039;t wrap my mind around it. I talk about loss in this column on an almost daily basis, but today, I feel the loss for someone else and I feel as if I hurt as much as I ever did anytime my own loss swamps me in grief. What can I do, from far away? Have any of you ever lived through this or dealt with someone who&amp;#039;s had to live through this? How can I help him and his family? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a46758/bleeding-today/>