I remember taking a late-night walk, a few months after you died, when a thought reduced me to tears. I was ambling along a bridge that divided my apartment building from your former nursing home and I thought: “You’re never going to see me as a person in love.”
At that time, I thought I was in love. Maybe I was. My feelings for an unavailable man consumed me in a way nothing else had or should. I didn’t know how to be apart from my thoughts about him, but I didn’t know how to be with him either. All my relationships were suffering as a result.
Years earlier, you and I had lived together in your apartment for the summer. I cared for you as your Alzheimer’s was taking a turn for the worse, and I was between housing, between degrees, between … everything. We sat down for one of those long, rambling chats you loved. You were always a natural storyteller. The words weren’t coming so freely any more, especially in English, but still, you talked. I loved listening to you talk.
You told me that you were worried about me. Because some people naturally gravitate towards marriage and family, but I talk to myself. I knew what you meant, and it was true. The running feedback loop of thoughts and writing that had accompanied me on my life’s journey made it difficult for me to know how to let anybody else in.
Though you loved and cared for so many in your long life, I always felt that you also understood this kind of solitude well. Maybe this is one of the reasons why our bond was always so deep and strong.
You also told me that day, not for the first time, about your first love, the man who was not my grandfather, who came first, from whom war and death and circumstances tore you apart. You described this love with a sparkle in your eyes. This time, I asked what I’d been afraid to ask you before: “Did you ever fall in love with my grandfather?”
I’ll never forget your answer: “Love is what you make.” Love is not one thing, I understood from you. One great love doesn’t have to overwhelm you and swallow you, and all future possibility of love, whole. Life evolves and the nature of our love evolves with it, and our capacity to love never changes, but we have to find that capacity deep within ourselves. This is where the secret to happiness lies, and it will carry you through darker times.
I need you to know that it took a while, but my relationship to love grew stronger. The relationship I had with the unavailable man imploded, along with my job, and just about everything else. I went travelling on my own for months, and made a point of steering away from romantic love.
I did many things I had never done before. Yoga, meditation, thinking less about what I should be doing and more about what I was doing – having fun, connecting with kind, fascinating people, rekindling my wonder for life.
It is amazing who you will attract into your life when you are kinder to yourself. And I did. About a week before my scheduled flight home. Our paths crossed in a guesthouse garden and the puzzle pieces seemed already in place. It was easy. Even when it was hard. We have vastly different backgrounds and were more or less headed to opposite sides of the Earth. But we chose to make the decisions that would allow us to stay together and give things a chance.
Six years later, we have travelled far, we have dug deep, we have worked through many of our own demons and the ones we stirred up together. We did all this knowing what trust and unconditional love feels like. Because this is the love I made. Against whatever odds.
I am 42 now. It’s been almost 10 years since you died. I have your exact grey streak like a zebra stripe down the left side of my hair. I used to marvel at yours when I was little. People who haven’t seen me in a long time mention our resemblance. Thank you so much for loving me, and always holding my hand on the path to love.
Anonymous
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