Atonement

March 14, 2008 | Category: In My Life

Elie Weisel said that;
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.
The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference.
The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference.
And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference."

I don't know the moment we went away from love, but I do know the love didn't die.

My heart expands and then aches, but never deflates. The room it made for you is still there. If you were to claim it, I don't know what I would do. It would be messy, and painful, to wake up something that's been falling asleep for so long.

In that moment, those last times we shared a laugh and a look and an intimacy that was ours...I couldn't imagine a time when it wouldn't be like that. We get older, we get wiser, but so many things we stay willfully stupid at.

Everyone leaves, eventually. But let's tuck that away in a box because there's no way to live with it written large.

You are good. You are infinitely precious. Because you live, the world is a better place. Where you inhabit, I know there is joy and meaning. I wish sometimes that I could make myself so small that you wouldn't see me, so I could be where you are and see the rich colors of your life.

As I am now, as we are, there's a white lake between us that seems impossible to cross. So I am left, once in a while, imagining. Envisioning your loud claps of laughter shared by people I wouldn't know. Creating a picture in my mind of you sipping from a steaming mug as you look out the window, or sifting through the mail as you walk in the door.

I still love you.

I will always love you.

It's nothing in your days, maybe.

But it matters to me. I am a better person because of it. A gift you gave me a lifetime ago, that I still cherish. With a quietness that is not indifference. In a new way that is not death.

The sun came out today. The world stopped to warm itself. My fingers over a phone, knowing I would never call. That was then. I live now. But I wanted you to know.

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