And Another Year Goes By

"I'll never forget you.  I don't want

to either. Along with the great sadness
that comes from missing you lives a 
universe of gratitude for having shared 
love at all.  Our connection changed my life.
I am honored to be able to miss you."
Scott Stabile

And so, love, the anniversary of another year of being apart from you has passed.  I went on a hike with a group of friends yesterday so as not to brood, and I was able to smile and laugh, not the fake laughter that came when first you were gone, but with true enjoyment, though perhaps tinged with sorrow that you would not be around for me to share with:  the things I saw and heard and thought.  On the way home, I drove past the place where we first made love, tentative, drowning in each other, inebriated by the newness of each other.  The place where our first child was conceived.  The place where we fell in love.  A smile crossed my face as a song I always associated with those early days played on the radio: "Just Another Day in Paradise" by Phil Vassar.  What are the odds of that happening?  Did you, from wherever you are, arrange it?

How different those first days were, those days when we had nothing but each other.  An old, battered mobile home, mattress on the floor.  No table, no couch, just each other.  I look around me now.  So much STUFF all of which I would trade to be back there with you once again.  I like to think if that happened, if I woke up back in your arms, that we could avoid some of the mistakes we made along the way.  But then, of course, it would not have been us, for mistakes mold us as surely as if we were clay, and perhaps more so than successes.  

Today I rode my bike.  I hoped to ride farther and perhaps should have with the temperature being around 40 and the sun shining.   Thank you, love, for buying me a bicycle.  From the seat of that machine I can sing and laugh and dream and cry.  I can live in a way that I might, perhaps, have missed otherwise.  It has brought me friendships that I prize beyond measure.  No, I don't want to forget you.  I won't forget you.  But I am not, love, standing still and you would not want me to.  I like to think that when I laughed yesterday, you smiled.