Love’s gentle footprint lingers on.
Every now and then, I find myself reminiscing the long beautiful days watching the sunset; chasing me by the beach and making sand castles which he would eventually end up crashing thus annoying me. Such nostalgia warms me up now.
When he left, I did not cry immediately nor did I throw around any sort of heavy emotion. I endured months of moving around the house like I didn’t belong. As a matter of fact, I had no idea on how to stay in a house we had called home for years. The hum of the fridge in the quiet and the occasional gulp of the water dispenser brought me back to current whenever my thoughts strayed to what was. Troy, our dog-now my dog- who used to announce his arrival by the vigorous wiggle of his tail and love barks, sat by me patiently; sadly. Even he knew the hollow that had crawled in to our lives.
Then one gloomy morning, as I drifted through my room with the little bit of light I had left, I found one of his shirts in the closet that used to be his. I had not opened that side since he had left and I could sense the dust accumulating. And there it was. A blue long-sleeved shirt I loved. He knew I loved it. Maybe it was the best comfort he could leave me with. It was perfectly hung up on its own. I slowly caressed its sleeves, taking my time to settle my feelings.
In the afternoon as I went to get ice cream, a stranger patiently held the door to the shop for me with a smile. The evening sun kissed my cheeks softly as I walked home. My neighbour passed by to check on me, bringing me a homemade banana cake. And Troy brought in a beautiful stray kitten.
I don’t know how, but I found myself suddenly smiling. The weight pulling me down, was suddenly lifted as if I had found enlightenment and I finally understood the difference between holding on and being held by memory.
No. It did not mean that I stopped hurting.
Love, after goodbye, looked like a quiet, softer kind of staying, not the absence. It looked like still believing what you had was real, even when it no longer exists. It looked like wishing someone well even with the distance in between. It looked like knowing that though one love is lost, the universe will always find a way to pay back, in love, for that which was lost.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: Helena Lopes On Unsplash
