breathe

I was walking Toby this evening when he suddenly veered to the right and began pawing at this mound of dirt near an apple tree. As I bent down for a closer look, I realized that it was an empty bottle of Pinot Noir, with its slim neck sticking up above the ground. I was afraid that if I left it alone, another furry creature would come by and possibly crack the bottle open and injure itself. So, I pulled it up out of the ground.

Inside, I found this wine-stained piece of paper, whose contents I’m about to share with you in this post. I don’t know who it’s written by or where it came from, but I do hope that this wasn’t the only bottle buried near my home.

From the moment I realized that the pink-tinted light was fading from my eyelids, I grew excited. Excited to see you. We’ve been separated for ten years now, and it’s been ten years too long. How have you been without me? Were you watching over me every day and night, tasting my bittersweet tears of happiness and pain while I played with our grandchildren? Or do emotions too, exist in heaven, and you found it too difficult to be physically apart from me so you secluded yourself into the room that promised the “passing of ten years in three seconds?” I hope I don’t sound conceited—but you, of all people, know that I didn’t ask that question out of self-pride. I merely asked because it’s what I would have done, if I had to spend ten years away from you.

When we were young and brash, we loved each other fiercely and passionately. But my mother always said that passion love is a fire love, and fires don’t stay lit unless we tend to them. “Fire loves,” she said, “Are not forever, are not steady; they are too extreme. If not cared for, they die down. If given too much kindle, they rage into an inferno that consumes all of the life around it.” We were naïve and busy; completely mesmerized by one another but deeply enthralled in our own activities. We let that fire go.

But our love was different, too.

And that is why I believed it was so hard for me to forget you; impossible for me to watch you blow away like the mere ashes left after a beach bonfire, for me to move on to another fire pit.

Towards the end of our fire love, I had realized that I didn’t want sole fire love in my life. I wanted something more natural, more secure. I thought I didn’t find it with you, so I left. Looking back now, do you think I made the wrong decision? Or did we need the break in order to discover what we truly meant to one another? There wasn’t a day where a memory of you did not flash before my eyes.

During our time apart, I searched for the love that my mother described as the best kind of love: water love. Water is simple, pure and, in a river, flows steadily and quietly. It’s a peaceful love. And I did find this love, with someone else, while we were apart. But my mother never mentioned to me that this stream of water love could also overflow, choke, and drown the surrounding life that feeds into it. I thought this was the type of love that was true, the type of love that I had been waiting for, so I ignored the thunderstorms and the rain. I sat nearby and watched helplessly as the water inched rapidly higher. I permitted myself to be drawn into its currents over and over and allowed its water to enter my lungs on so many occasions. And I almost succumbed entirely to its black depths. But I, whose lion sign slumbered deeply for years, finally rose and cried out against such constriction. Too much water, I learned, suppressed life.

After so many years in the land of perpetual moisture, I ran away, stopping at the base of a tall, old tree, whose leaves were glittering with dew underneath the diamond sky. It was there that I rested and replenished, squeezing my lungs of the remaining black water. One morning, while my face was tilted to the heavens, counting the blessed rays of the sun against my skin, I heard footsteps behind me. And then a voice.

“Hello.”

It was you.