Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Keeper of the Memories

36 years

37 ½ if you start from the day we met.

Keeper of the Memories. The family historian.

It’s my job now to remember all the special days and keep them in my heart. No one reminds me...no one shares their own memories of those days special to the two of us unless I ask. It’s not so much they don’t remember or that they think it will hurt ME to remember them…it hurts them.

Don’t mistake that I am upset about that. I knew when he died it would come to me to remember and think upon them. Mine to look at the memories as if opening a treasured photo album and pour over the pages of our life together.

36 years. A lifetime as the clock ticks. An instant in the mind.

Two opposite and vivid memories stick in my mind from that day.

My father had started a fight with the Best Man, who in the end, only stuck around for the wedding and then left. I was furious with my dad as the processional started….right up until I looked at Jim’s face.

He stood smiling at the head of the aisle I was about to walk. Waiting for me at the other end, just as I imagine him doing now.

I clearly recall thinking…”this is it…this is the day I begin my life as me and our lives as us.” (along with “I can’t wait to get this man”…meaning my dad…”off my arm.”)

No nerves.

No fear.

Only joyous anticipation of the years we would spend together.

I regret not one day of it.

Through the good, the bad, the magical and the mundane I have not a single regret save the one that involves not having had enough time with him.

This is my 6th anniversary without him. While there is a sadness for what is lost, there is a fuller measure of great joy for the time we were gifted to have together.

He was a good man.

I would not have missed this dance for anything in this world.

Happy Anniversary, Jim.

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