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“But they will remember you. They’ll remember you every second of every day. They won’t be able to stop remembering you. Everything they say, everything they smell, taste, hear, absolutely everything in their lives is linked to you. In a way, you will haunt them. You will be constantly in their thoughts even when they don’t want you there, because they’ll need you gone so that they can get through, and then there are days when they’ll need you there in order for them to get through.
Sometimes they’d do anything to not think of you. They won’t need extra plants and trees to see you, they won’t need a quiz to remember you by. Do you understand?”
I read an article on how the clocks stand still to keep our time in sync with the universe. It’s called the leap second: a one-second adjustment applied to the coordinated universal time because the Earth’s rotation speed changes irregularly. A positive leap second is inserted between second 23:59:59 and second 00:00:00 of the following date, offering an extra second in our lives. News articles and magazine features have posed the question, what can happen in a second? What can we achieve with this extra time?
In one second, almost two and a half million emails are sent, the universe expands fifteen kilometers and thirty stars explode, a honey bee can flap its wings two hundred times, the fastest snail travels 1.3 centimeters, objects can fall sixteen feet, and “Will you marry me?” can change a life. Four babies are born. Two people die. One second can be the difference between life and death.
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People who don’t fit together suddenly do and then you can’t imagine anyone else fitting at all. Circumstance and happenstance collide to synchronize two people who until then repelled each other, so they find themselves pulled into a net electric field. Love; as natural as shifting tectonic plates with seismic results.
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Humans possess insatiable longings for wealth, status, and power, but are hungry, most of all, for love.
“I’ll see you everywhere.”
Much as I want to, I can’t hide in him forever.
The beauty and challenge of long-term relationships is that you change and shift at different times in different directions, side by side under the same roof. Most often, these changes are subtle and you’re subconsciously adapting all the time to the constant but gentle shifting of another human being that you’re so connected to; like two shape-shifters battling to coincide, for better or worse. Remain who you are while they alter, or change with them. Inspire them to go in another direction, gently push, pull, mold, tear at, nurture. Wait.
In a world of infinite possibilities, I should have known there is no end to the loss that we can experience, but neither is there to the knowledge and growth that arises because of it and in spite of it.
Perhaps it is not death that angers or scares us, it’s the fact that we have no control over it.
Life cannot just be taken away from us without our consent. Given time, and our permission having been granted, we would accept our fate and plot our own timely deaths.
We want to control our deaths, our goodbye to the world, and if we can’t control it, we can at least control how we leave it behind.
Their dad, forever.
And in one second, sorrow can mutate to joy.
It’s only paper, but it’s not. They’re only words, but they’re not. We’re only here for such a short time, the paper will outlive us all, it will scream, shout, roar, sing our thoughts, feelings, frustrations, and all the things that go unsaid in life. The paper will act as a messenger for their loved ones to read and hold; words from a mind, controlled by a beating heart. Words mean life.
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To look back, to go back, is not to be weak. It is not to reopen wounds. It takes strength, it takes courage. It takes a person who is more in control of who they are to cast a discerning, non-judgmental eye over who they once were. I know without doubt that revisiting me will encourage me, and everyone who is touched by my journey, to soar.
Inveniam viam. I shall either find a way or make one.
“You can only lose what you cling to.” I can hang on fiercely to the past, to all my things, or I can let go and hold them in my heart.
because no matter how chaotic, everyone has to find their hiding place or you can’t hear yourself think. Our hiding place is each other. We create our space, and we live in it.
This is the problem with loving and losing, with holding on and letting go, with being held and then released, reconnecting and then disconnecting. There’s always another side to the coin, there is no middle ground. But I must find it. I can’t lose myself again. I must rationalize, I must locate myself, ground myself, put everything in perspective. I must not make everything about me, my feelings, my needs, my desires, my losses. I must stop feeling so deeply but I must not be numb; I must move on but I must not forget; I must be happy but not reject sadness; I must embrace but not cling; I
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have to remember, for every goodbye, there’s been a hello. And there’s nothing more wonderful than a hello from one person to another.
remember me. Because ultimately, it’s all anyone wants. Not to get lost, or left behind, not to be forgotten, to always be a part of the moments they know they’ll miss. To leave their stamp. To be remembered.
Arrival into this world is a marathon for both mother and child, life pushes to get into this world, and leaving it is a fight to stay.
Be kind. Be smart. Be brave. Be happy. Be careful. Be strong. Don’t be afraid of being afraid. Sum times we are all afraid.
Death rips people apart, but it also has a way of stitching those left behind together.
