Of love and memory

“Hi,” says she, Illuminating the whole room with her bright smile. Shadows of his doubt flee before it. His smile at that time was only capable of reflecting the emptiness deep inside his soul. Each word echoes back from the cold hard brick walls which he carefully assembled one brick at a time into an almost impenetrable hiding place.

Her smile is a beacon that he can’t ignore, and he can’t help but wonder “If I follow its light where will it lead me?” Looking about the semi-dark room it is plain everyone here is just as lonely as he. If he were to ask all that are present, he’d receive an assortment of answers, a different one for each face in the room. Unfortunately, only a very few are even capable of answering truthfully.

He thinks “I can’t believe that she sees me and still wants to let our voices caress each other. I have few words with which I can only explain that when we are together, I don’t feel so alone.”

Crashing and tearing, the enraged tiger of morning comes rushing over the horizon, leaving only shredded fragments of our time together that linger as seeds in the fertile ground of his imagination.

“We must do this and more if we can,” he mutters to himself. “I’m so tired of being alone.” He loves her smile. Touching and kissing rouses just enough hunger to make it plain that she wrestles with a deep meaningful question. While she gets an answer to her question. He can wait, he has much experience waiting.

He just hopes her answers won’t require him to wait alone. In his mind he holds her with both his arms. Slightly aided chance brings them together again, it matters not whether she looked for him with the same intensity that he did for her? Only one thing really matters he doesn’t feel completely alone, for now.
In his mind he knows one thing for certain any time he spent with her was unique and delicious. Each moment intoxicating but only fleeting. She made it plain it could not last forever. Each second was a treasure that now can only be remembered, not duplicated. She made him feel alive for the first time in so very long, that certainly deserves his eternal gratitude.

On the steep hills of life, the light of memories led him ever upward. He withheld the facts about the life-changing moments which sprang from the fertile soil of his mind at each touch which she gave so freely with the warmest of smiles.

Was this experience love?

I believe within my definition of love this would qualify. There is no attached subsection or paragraph originated by the definer of all rules. No explanation of a yardstick we could use to measure the worth of the experiences we shared.

WOW it was a brilliant explosion of moments strewn like sparkling remnants of fireworks across the night sky.

We discovered the design in the dance of the dying embers.

Who had the foresight to provide the pure light of memory to illuminate my very soul in darkest times?

You shine brightly in memories of times past and feeling of knowing the value you placed in me, you even allowed me to share your life.

No one had ever done that before we met. and only a scarce few times after we parted.

Ours was a hard act to follow! I had a tough time adjusting because nothing in my life ever produced such a spectacular light show again.

There were a few moments in my life which exceeded my dreary expectations. But all fell far short of the experience of you.

I need you to understand that the kind of love I have for you is like the heat produced by a nuclear fire. It has the capability to nurture or destroy. I tried to let it out slowly to provide warmth in cold times.

The substitute woman I mistakenly married only wanted a temporary exchange of primal force and she would share nothing else. I was never privy to her thoughts. I wanted something that she never had experienced and therefore was unable to give to anyone else. She was only able to hand out tiny fragments of the love she had inside. If what she wanted so desperately was exposed it would be the end of everything.

She would never allow herself to ask for or give anything. Her method was to criticize and hinder any attempt to alter our course. “Plans are a waste of time. They never happen to people like us.”

I have learned through the years what it means to live without being properly hitched to the plow I thought we were supposed to pull together. We would wind up pulling against each other. Not much gets done in situations like that.

She is very verbal and never eager to miss an opportunity to cut me down to size. She drank excessively for years at home, a loner who would push me when I approached her to the length of her arms. She no longer drinks but that is the only claim to healing which she will allow herself.

At times I drank also. I learned to not expect anything and the safest place to be was as far out of the line of fire as possible.

Why didn’t I leave? I thought this insanity was all I deserve and of course there were our children. When I looked at them, I had moments when I thought my heart would burst with love. My adopted son and two beautiful daughters made me feel important to them at least for a while.

You see I learned a long time ago nothing is forever. I accept what is given with gratitude. I reciprocate if someone hugs me.

It’s hard to respond properly to a chilly hug. It is what it is and that is all that it is nothing more.

I do miss the warmth of someone’s arms around me, a head on my shoulder and sharing our body warmth on a cool rainy night.

So now I am spending an inordinate amount of time, remembering. Sometimes I smile with a feeling like I just went over the top of a roller coaster. I just appreciate moments like that.

They are as fleeting as the streak of a spark falling from a bottle rocket. I can see a lot in the afterglow of a dying ember. I know it is just an after-image clinging to the part of my eye which can stretch out the life of the light a little longer moment. It is but a type of memory that exists for a short time but just long enough to bring a flicker of light into the cold darkness of the empty space in my soul.

I try very hard to stay out of there. Instead I remember you and smile. After sunset and a long hard night the sun rises Thank you for the memories that light my day.