Letters to My Love,

                             

                                                              Letters to My Love,  The Story of a Life Untold



Chapter1

June 11, 2011

She sat by the window, looking out at the  North  Carolina mountains  she had so come to love.  Her breathing was heavy and  uneven at times and it took so much strength to simply sit there.  She was dying.  She knew she was dying.

The tips of the mountains were framed in pink, a soft lacy canopy left by the sun on his way home to bid them goodnight, she looked at them fusing the sight into her soul, for this might be the last time  The lush rolling green provided a majestic carpet that were a hundred different shades of green blending together in a symphony for her eyes.  She silently mused to herself that  she did not know so many shades existed.  She gazed upon the hyacinth and larkspur  outside the window she so lovingly planted what seemed like a thousand years ago.  A garden of reckless abandon that mimicked the tumult of so much of her life.  She saw a gentle rolling of color, hills filled with the magic and memories

She thought too of  Robert, who was never far from her heart,  and the letters she had written him so many years ago.  Her mind drifted to the past.  Those letters.  They were a salvation to her in a time when she did not think she could on.  She reread them often in her heart, words that somehow brought him closer to her.  She wondered where he might be, if he was still alive, if he even remembered her at all. 

She would have liked for him to remember her, to think of her, to miss her but she also knew that was selfish.  It was selfish for her to want for him a pain she always carried with her.  As so it was only a small part of her that wished this, the rest of her heart wanted him happy and content and loved, the way she finally became.

Her eyes were dimmer now, the rolling green before her merging into a time from a lifetime ago, pictures of pain and hope and a love that sustained her and stayed with her throughout her life.





                                                                                          January 1, 1986


To my Darling,

I know you are uncomfortable when I write that.  I can feel the way it makes you itch inside and you wish I that wouldn’t say it, not in that way.  But today, well today, I am safe in doing so.  I am saying good by my love.  The time has come for our story to be complete.  I know you are shocked, you never believed I would have the strength required to end this and in many ways I am sorry I do.

I wish  I could think of something original to say, to describe to you how my heart is breaking as I write these words.  I wish I could show you the desolation my soul feels when it glimpses a horizon without you in it.  But there is nothing, no words will come to me as my heart is splintering into a million pieces, shattering so completely, I fear it will never come together to love again.  But I must do this,  my darling, for me and also for you. 

I will always love you, of that you can be sure, and in times when you too might feel that overwhelming loneliness, know I have loved you from the beginning, a song that was only complete when you came into my life.  That sounds so trite, I know it as I write this, but again, the words I wish to say are escaping me, and so these thoughts will have to do.  Somehow, in writing them down, they have become a balm to the pain that has encompassed me and maybe someday it may be that to you also.

Tears are staining this page as I am writing and I fear I will have to begin this all over again to prove to you that I am that brave and strong woman you always thought that I was.  But I am not my love, I am heartbroken and lost and weak and this, this is so hard.  I can no longer live in good conscience Robert, to that which I , we, have done, and to those I am hurting, even without their knowledge.  My happiness, I have ever so slowly come to realize, is not worth this.  I have stolen from the Gods of love that which is not mine and now it is time to return it and pay the price.

I know you will miss me, if not, then that part of my story might be too sad to bear, but I know in my heart you will.  You will miss my strength, the strength  that I once possessed and am going to regain, and my honor and the wisdom I also will find again as I find myself. 

And so, I am writing to you, my darling, as if our story might continue until the end.  I am writing twenty five letters, one for each year we might have been together.  I am writing to you of my life, as I imagine it might unfold and of the love I will always have for you.  This will be for strength  for you when the days to come are lonely and the skies are bleak and you too can find no hope in the never ending planes of mundane life.  This is to remind you that were and are loved, and in being loved you are kept from the ordinary and can rise above and become that which I know you are capable.  And not only capable Robert, but commanded, commanded  by forces far above yourself.  You are going to accomplish great things my love, as am I, and someday in a future life, or land we know nothing about, our souls will meet and dance together again.

Love always,

Sarah….
 

                                                                                      January 12, 1986


Sarah sat by the window looking out, but seeing nothing.  If she had looked she would have seen the storm  gathering, gaining force and leaving the horizon dark and gray and foreboding.  If she could have looked she would have seen a scene mirroring that of her heart.  But the tumult within took precedence and all she could see was the pain etched into her soul, the horror at what she had done.

Jess her daughter, was screaming her name insistently, “Mom, mom where is my new shirt?”  She could hear it on the outskirts of her mind, but everything else was taken up with her pain and at that moment she could not let the voice in and instead continued to look sightlessly at the sky before her, the ache engulfing her every breath.  The pleas became more insistent, beside her now, startling her so she jumped, “Mom, what are you doing?  Where is my shirt?”  the last sentence was said so plaintively that Sarah’s reverie was interrupted and she tried to turn her attention to her daughter and away from the everything that had seized hold.

“I’m sorry Jess, what is it?”

My shirt, where is my shirt?”  My new one, the lavender one I just bought.  Where is it?”

Sarah of course had no idea where it was and even which once she was referring to, but she rose from her seat by the window and went upstairs to help her find it.  Her thoughts would be there when she returned and right at this time she welcomed the interruption from a despair that threatened to consume her.

They looked through the closet, the hamper for the offending item and as they searched Jess out of no where asked a question that froze her heart.

“Mom, when did you know it was real, You know, when did you know you loved him?”

Jess of course was referring to her father, but Sarah’s heart had turned to Robert instead, instinctively, naturally, as automatically as one does when thinking on the love of their life.  It was Robert she thought of when the answer was poised upon her lips.  It was Robert , the memory of their first meeting  that gave credence to the answer she gave to her daughter without thinking.  “I knew the first moment I saw him, that I loved him, had always loved him, and would love him forever.  His name was etched forever on my heart and when I saw him, I knew I was complete.”

She was sorry the minute the words left her mouth for Jess was staring at her, her mouth open as if she was unable to believe what she had just heard.  “Wow mom, I would have never guessed that,  I guess I thought, well I don’t know,  I guess that it grew gradually.”  She looked at her mother a little strangely, “Really?”

Sarah bit her lip, partly form the pain that was in her heart as she remembered the moment she saw his face and partly from the embarrassment from revealing so much.  “Yes” she said curtly as she looked into a drawer and pulled out the lavender shirt  “Here it is” she said triumphantly holding out a sweater with tiny flowers sewn on to the right side.  “This is it, isn’t it?”

Jess’s look of relief was palpable, and she relaxed.  “Mom” she stopped after that word looking down as if she didn’t know what next to say.  Sarah looked at her daughter expectantly, waiting for the question although if truth be told her attention was still far from her daughter and so she waited  and did not hurry her.

“I think Garrett is going to ask me to marry him tonight.”  Sarah’s attention was fully on her daughter now and a myriad of emotions scattered through her.  Joy for her first borne at the beginning of a new life, fear also at that possibility, sorrow at losing her and even though she was embarrassed to admit it,  jealousy.  The green eye of jealousy mocking her with her disastrous decisions and a life without love.  She  scooted him to a far corner of her heart and instead concentrated on the joy. 

“Jess….Jess.”  Her voice was warm and excited, as she truly was, outside that tiny place she had walled off that longed for what her daughter had found and she again would never know. “I can’t believe it,  He’s waited so long.  Why do you think it’s tonight?”

Jess hedged, her glance falling away and looking at her feet.  “I don’t know, he’s dropped hints, here and there and well…“ her voice trailed off and the look of joy that should have occupied her face was absent.  Sarah wasn’t quite sure what she said say and was frankly surprised by this seeming unease.  “So honey,” she tried to choose her words carefully,  “Jess why aren’t you happier?”

Jess continued to look at her feet and then a tear fell from the corner of her eye joined by another and soon she was sobbing deep and shuddering.  Sarah gathered her daughter into her arms and held her like she did when she was tiny and let her cry as she herself cried deep within, their tears mixing  on both the seen and unseen plane. 

When she had finished Sarah stepped away.  She smoothed back her daughters hair and wiped her tears, and she again waited for her to begin.

Jess wiped away  betraying black steaks of mascara and with a long final shuddering sigh began.  “I don’t know  how much Garrett loves me and or how much of it he feels responsible.  She bit her lip,  “I thought I was pregnant two months ago, I wasn’t” she said hurriedly when a look of shock fell on her mother’s face,” but Garrett changed after that.