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.

Unexpected Anniversary

When Jim died I never expected nor dreamed I would want to be in a relationship again at my age.

Sometimes the universe has other ideas.

Today marks 3 years for the Handyman and I.

When first we met I had no idea love would come rushing in the door while I was busy looking elsewhere. At that point I had come to a place where being ME was beginning to feel very OK. I thought my life was headed in a different direction. (not the first time I have been deluded by that though, BTW) Then you casually took my hand to help me from that van and I realized I was headed somewhere else. I neither expected nor anticipated finding love again along this path.

Throughout these 3 years we have laughed, danced, dared to love, argued, adventured and worked our way together into a very comfortable space...like a favorite well worn sweater or comfy quilt. You are my friend as well as lover and partner and I am grateful for the gift.

I have learned a lot from you in processing my own thoughts about how we got here, looking at the world through a different lens and keeping my life in the here and now.

We have been through some interesting times between your children and mine. Blending them into a family is still a work in progress, but not one fraught with the angst that so many others of our kind have and still face. I am grateful that their wishes for our combined happiness have come to outweigh any concerns they may have had about it not being their respective parent who got to spend this fall and winter of our lives together.

I look forward with gladness in my heart to whatever future is meant to be between us on the rest of this journey.

 

I wrote these words not long before we made our relationship permanent 3 years ago. They are as true today as they were then.

I will be a rock for you to lean on

When times are hard and your heart is sad.

I will be a refuge from the storms

That life and past sorrows bring

In the course of the day.

My arms will hold you without reservation

And keep you safe and warm

When nights are cold and deep.

I give you my love without strings or walls

To keep within your heart

For the length of our days together.

I give you all freely and without doubt

To treasure and keep as you will.

I will regret nothing, for the choice is mine

To keep my heart or give it away

I choose to give it to you.

Thank you for the gifts you bring to my life. I will savour the love and companionship we share for what ever time the universe graces to give us.

Happy Anniversary.

Echos of the Past

4th of July

Independence Day

Families, food and fireworks

Nostalgia

A scrapbook collage piecing the present with the past.

Vignettes highlighting my Handyman playing ping-pong with my nephew’s young children…too young to remember Jim…side by side with memories of Jim laughing with my nephew and his friends 4th of July’s long past.

Scenes set with Himself chatting with Grandmonkey’s first real boyfriend introduced to the family in the time honored tradition of a holiday get together superimposed over Jim and our daughter’s first.

Images of the Handyman and my brother-in-law, heads bent towards each other across the patio table, deep in conversation etched beside the recall of Jim and Bruce on the deck smoking and talking.

Driving home through the night was as if entering a tunnel of time slicing through sights, sounds and smells of July evenings long ago. Children’s laughter as they scamper through the darkness lit by sparklers stinging their hands. Sulphur from the last of the fireworks sending bursts of starlight into the night sky commingled with scent of hot dogs, hamburgers and watermelon hanging gently on the summer air. Barbeque grills dimly glowing from the lingering embers of the day’s cooking…a flip book turned backwards to be viewed in reverse.

I’d be lying if I said there was not a mist to my eyes in the remembrance… a gentle, aching tug at my heart for all that is gone. Yet, there is a comforting gratitude for the love surrounding that past life that also hugs this present life…a solace in the replay and digesting of the truth that life continues a well worn path even through the tragedies of our hearts.

Remembering a time not so long past when it was not so, I am thankful for the memories of a love stored among the treasured relics within my heart and grateful for that which remains to be written.

“My cup runneth over.” (Gena Rowlands…Hope Floats)