Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

It’s hard to hold on to people the older we get. Life looks different for everyone, and you have to keep choosing one another.

“The problem with love is that it’s not enough,” she says. And then she looks up at me. Her eyes are still soft. “But it’s also nearly impossible to let go of once you’ve found it.”

We have to be cracked open sometimes. We have to be cracked open sometimes to let anything good in. What I see now, emerging in the mirror, is this one, simple truth: learning to be broken is learning to be whole.

No one’s time is promised.

We are all dying. Every day. And at some point it becomes a choice. Which one are you going to do today? Are you living or are you dying?”

But being surprised by life isn’t losing, it’s living. It’s messy and uncomfortable and complicated and beautiful. It’s life, all of it. The only way to get it wrong is to refuse to play.

“Love is a net.” He looks right at me. His eyes are gentle. I see in them the enormity of his grief, the enormity of his love. “She would tell me all the time that the love we had mattered, that it could catch you, that it was catching you.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him. “Sweetheart,” he says. He squeezes my hand. His grip is strong, assured. “Sure you do.” He smiles at me. There is a glint in his eye. “You just do what’s in your heart.”

“I don’t know what it’s like to live and not apologize to myself, or for myself. I need to find out.”

We are powerful because we affect each other’s stories, all of us. We are here to impact each other, to knock into each other, to throw each other off-balance, sometimes even off track.

Without you, I think. Without you I would not have everything that came next.

Joy is contagious,