I'ts been almost five years since my late wife Shannon died, and I've been thinking about her this morning, and for the first time in a long time I felt grief, and an overwhelming urge just to talk to her. One of the many things about being a widower that I had to find out on my own, was that as time goes by, she kind of receded from everyday thought. The other thing I had to learn by myself what is that no matter how much time goes by, and no matter how healed I thought I was, it will still hurt. It's a different kind of hurt than it was in the early days. Now it feels like a shadow of grief instead of the raw, horrible, soul eating pain that was always with me. It's still there though, and although I have forgotten what her voice sounded like, how her hair smelled, or what it felt like to hold her, there's a still small voice reminding me that I get to move forward and she doesn't. It still doesn't seem fair to me, but who ever said life was fair?