The Days I Loved You Most

by Amy Neff

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you... I could walk through my garden forever.” —Alfred, Lord Tennyson

our blood and bone the fabric

I will never see that life unfurl, will never feel those tiny fingers curl around mine, will never see my granddaughter inherit the secrets of motherhood, the way it binds us together. I held my babies as she holds hers, and I should be there to show her, to give her tired eyes a moment to close, to say, give me that baby, the one I’ve loved for as long as I’ve loved you, which is to say, before we ever met, for my entire lifetime and forevermore.

the only place that calls me home.

Intense, some people call me. Relentless.

Something to give my mother, a dream she never fulfilled, for all she has forgiven of me.

“Most things end up back where they came from, honey,” Evelyn teases, bumping her hip against Jane’s. “But it’s still worth letting it find its way.”

She has never belonged to anyone but herself, and I have never belonged to anyone but her.

Still, I root for him.

But you have your own lives, separate from ours, and those lives will go on.

“Dying isn’t the only thing that kills us, son,”

There will always be another day, just one more day, worth living for.”

“I’ll follow you anywhere.”

“Why should I say it? It feels like I’m screaming it.

I am unmoored.

Steadiness over time is what makes it beautiful.

The weight of those we leave behind.

flowers meant for the girl I used to be.

dreams don’t come true because you want them to, and nothing lasts forever.

That a mother’s illness could possibly be divisive.

The idea of losing her in little ways then all at once...but

wondering how another year passed without our permission.

Sixteen, when my hair hung loose and wet against my back after a swim, when my skin felt tight from hours in the sun, when I ran through the field and jumped off the dock and splashed in the waves, when I recorded all of my wildest desires with certainty I’d see them through.

I am the one who lives in a house that doesn’t feel like mine, trapped in this town that I desperately wanted to escape.

The girl who was afraid of heights yet desperate to fly.

No one could have told us, saved us from our mistakes. We had to see how it felt to run.

If you don’t run.

cocooning from the grief we never could outrun.

it’s hard to believe something so alive in my memory can really be gone.

Which is worse to lose, the one you love, or your ability to recognize their face?

“I hope there is an ocean. And a sun to warm us after swimming.”

“I wouldn’t mind if it was sort of like this, all over again.”

I’ve loved my life, I’ve loved our life, I want to stay.

Sometimes, these things get taken without warning, and you can’t get them back.

It’s always been you. Even when I was afraid. It’s always been you.”

petals in her pockets, flowers in her hair?

Becoming a mother taught me so much about us, Mom.” She turns to me, and my eyes fill. “All the ways you were there for me that I was too stubborn to see.

We made this garden. And it is beautiful.

“I can’t live as less than I am.”

I don’t want our children to know me like that, it’s not how I want to be remembered.

I love you, I love you, come back, don’t leave me, I love you. Come back. My love, my life, I love you.

these are the days I love her most.