Heavy price

Dear Wilfred,

This is the first letter that I am writing to you and I think that you would like this script. It says 'tidy.' 

I don't know where you are right now or if you saw me balling my eyes out today. Wincing at the plot I knew was going to unfold, in a recent series called 'From Scratch.'

It is a love story about a couple who are reborn as individuals upon their meeting and dedicated to each other in their partnership. They have a blissful and perfect life together until he gets cancer, and passes away. She is left behind with their child and his family's home and land that have all passed into her care. That is the short version. I think that if I dig any deeper, I may cry at the recollection.

What I realized through snot and heavy breathing (as if it were my husband dying- dramatic, I know. You wouldn't approve), is that as people, we are all so afraid of finding love because of outcomes like this. Maybe it isn't death, but infidelity and rejection that wound us so deeply that we don't know how we can carry on. So we do everything that we can to sabotage it. We play games, don't commit, we exist barely sane in sub-par relationships. We duck and dive because to love is to pay the price of grief. And we never know when that bill is due. 

There was this moment when he is dying and she falls asleep next to him, and dreams about the moment that she chooses him and he is waiting for her in the rain. In that moment, I had a small glimmer of hope that all that I had witnessed over the last few hours had all been a dream that she was having, and that he was okay and she would live her life more fully and love harder because of the revelation that life is fleeting and fragile. BUT that did not happen, much to my dismay.

I know that you would tell me to live my life so that when it ends, I am not overwhelmed by 'what ifs.' I feel like all my priorities have just been adjusted and I see life more clearly than before. 

We can't purchase time enough when it comes to someone we love. You never know when a moment shared may be the last one. We learnt that, didn't we? It has left me thinking of you. I only hope that you had very few 'what ifs.' 

Until next time. 

I love you, 

A