Recently, I watched an interview Tom Jones did about one of his new songs. The song is entitled: I won’t crumble with you if you fall. It’s a beautiful power ballad that Tom Jones states is meant to be a song of strength and encouragement to the most important people in our lives. It’s a love song to his late wife who passed away from lung cancer back in 2016. Despite his years of serial infidelity his late wife Linda always stood by his side. As they both grew older their love developed into a deeper meaning, and he felt tremendous guilt during the last days of her life. Linda, his wife told Tom during those final weeks to never give up; to keep on living and continue to be the fixer, the role that he always played in her life.
I thought about the idea of the fixer; it’s an idea that Herb Knoll, our founder, has written about and spoken about it often. It accurately describes the role we, the husbands, usually played as we always tried to fix everything for our wives. Unfortunately, we painfully realized during our dark days that there are some things in life we cannot fix. In Tom Jones’ life he could not stop lung cancer from taking the life of his wife. In my case I could not stop end stage kidney disease from taking the love of my life. Terminal illnesses and other diseases are things we cannot control, nor can we fix, and they end up taking away the people we love.
Tom Jones underwent therapy after his wife died and struggled with many issues during that very difficult time in his life. He recalled with his therapist how his wife encouraged him not to fall and to keep going on. She told him, “I know you can’t fix this, but you must keep going forward. There are more things to do, and you must continue to live your life. Don’t ever give up”.
The ballad sends, I think, a powerful message to keep moving forward. Yes, as a widower now over four years along in my journey I remember the painful, horrible early days and weeks of grief. I remember telling my grief counsellor I wanted to give up. I did not see any positive future. I only saw darkness and sorrow.
As I listened to Tom Jones speak about the words from his dying wife and I thought about my own wife who encouraged me from her dying bed to keep going forward; it causes me to reflect on the bravery and wisdom of our late wives. I am sure many of us can share the same words uttered by your dying wife. Selflessly despite their pain and suffering our wives made sure to offer words of encouragement and hope before they left this world. The message they left is very simple but extremely challenging: Life still needs to be lived. We have a responsibility to our children, grandchildren, other family members, our pets or whoever is important in our lives so that we must continue to move forward.
I am so grateful to my wife who loved me and whose love I continue to experience in my life. I can never repay that debt, but I can continue to live my life to the fullest and enjoy the days I have left.
