It was impossible for me to have known

It was quite simple. She hadn't done anything special. There wasn't really anything different that she did with her hair and I had seen the clothes that she had on before. All she did was open the fridge and crush the empty carton of milk on the side of the island. That was really about it. 

 Maybe the light from the window lit the streaks of gray in her hair to recall the years that we walked through together, hand in hand, with sometimes heavy or feather-weight hearts. Maybe it was her eyes as she quickly glanced my way and flashed a smile as our boys worked on getting their school books together for their classes. I have no idea if was all of that, or none of it. What I do know is that, at that moment, I was overwhelmed. 

 "You look very pretty today."

 I was rather abrupt and, upon realizing how ordinary the day was and that this was probably not the time for compliments of that sort, I had to try to say something funny.

 "How do I look?"

 Her answer lightened the mood, but her image remained. It still does. 

 God, you know more than anyone that she has my heart. All of it. Yet I know that my heart, all of it, is too small a gift for what she has given to me. There is nothing on this earth that compares to her. You made her too well, Lord. And then you gave her to me. You know full well that there is no gift, completion, nor beauty, save her's.  

 I could not have known that the longing I had for a companion, lover, and friend would be so utterly satisfied in and so thoroughly excelled by her. The day for my contemplation of her will be today, tomorrow, and the next. Indeed she is pretty today. 

 So very pretty.

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