The sadness and pain you feel over the loss of your wife’s presence is shared by millions of others who have experienced the death of a spouse or close friend. From the limited vision we enjoy in this earthly life, some realities always appear to be incompatible. Intense suffering and happiness are two of them. How can you or your wife be happy when you are so miserable?

The answer, when we are able to receive it, is that things will look infinitely different when we eventually view them from God’s perspective, with the eyes of eternity, the way your wife sees them now. Suffering, whether physical, emotional or spiritual, does fit in God’s plan of creation and salvation. If there were no other proof, we have Jesus Christ’s life, death and resurrection to assure us.

From the Gospels, we know the Father was intimately present to Jesus always, even in the midst of his passion. Yet he did not remove that suffering. He knew that, even for his Son, it had an intimate and essential role in what enables us to come to a full and good human life.

Perhaps it all comes down to being humble enough to acknowledge that some realities of human existence lie beyond our comprehension in this life, the life your wife now understands in a way once impossible for her. She is with you in the communion of saints, supporting you. She is also brilliantly aware that in spite of all our doubts and fears, it will all fit together when we see all things as they really are.

It is true, of course, that there is no married life in heaven, certainly not in the reproductive dimension we experience here. However, several decades ago, Pope Pius XII had some enlightening and consoling words to day about that. Speaking to married couples, he noted that, while marriage itself may not endure in heaven, married love will continue. What does that mean?

First of all, part of heaven will be our conscious intimacy and communion with those who were dear to us here on earth. Beyond that, however, is the fact that our personalities, our ways of loving and being which we will carry into eternity, are molded largely by the people with whom we shared this earthly life. You are a significantly different person than you would have been had you not married, and a different person than if you had married someone other than the woman you did. In other words, your love for her and hers for you, has intimate effects in both of you that, in all their goodness, will never end.