Chapter Eleven - The Missing Half

11/21/19 - At the end-of-term celebration for my year as Rotary District Governor, just a month before she died, Penny bravely took the microphone and read a tribute to me that I will treasure every day for the rest of my life.  Twice in her speech she held back tears as she said that I was the best half of her.  My feelings are the exact mirror of hers.... Penny was the best half of me in so many ways.  Whichever of us was "best", the fact was that our lives had merged over our 42 years together such that we were a single living, breathing, thinking and feeling being.  Each of our strengths and weaknesses complemented the weaknesses and strengths of the other, like the tabs and notches of a jigsaw puzzle fitting perfectly together.  Nothing was done, nothing was felt by either of us that did not equally affect the other.  During her illness, I was caring for myself with every gesture of care I extended to Penny.  And when she died, it was an amputation of so much of my identity that  I am left with a giant void, a disembodiment, that I don't recognize my life, my dreams, my future, my needs like I once felt so clear about.  Each day I am a stranger in my own soul, reflexively walking through the routines I know so well, but completely rudderless for a core direction or identity.  I have not given up hope, as I know the loss is still so fresh and that healing, or reconciliation as my counselor calls it, is a long process.  But for the moment, I am as emotionally and spiritually handicapped as if I had lost the use of an arm and a leg.