Missing

Maybe I can place this missing here and it will cut less deeply, my soul will feel it less acutely.

We opened a huge box of gifts my brother and his wife shipped to us today and it inexplicably broke me. For all intents and purposes, I am a fully grown and mature human being. But I am not. I still miss everything and everyone and all the places I have loved to the very depths of my marrow. There are occasional reminders that we all live so terribly far from one another, that as we have grown, we have moved away and our lives have taken different trajectories.

The love is still there, but the physical presence is not. And these years will go so quickly. It is a reality that we may never live close again. That we may die thousands of miles from one another. That our relationship will consist of random text messages and boxes of gifts and letters sharing a fraction of our hearts in any given moment. This may be what is left for us and that is a heavy, heavy burden to consider.

December

How shall we spend these dark days? The world is on fire, there is war in Ukraine and Gaza, and our country is torn in half over false arguments about guns and pregnancy and basic human rights. There is so much suffering.

How shall we spend these dark days? Shall we sit together in the stillness of dawn, our bodies pressed together under a blanket against the onslaught of a December morning? Will you tell me the joke I don't find funny that makes you laugh so violently that I laugh, too? Shall we learn a song together and belt it out at the kitchen table, half tone deaf but entirely heartfelt. I will weep a little (as covertly as possible) the way I always do when my voice joins in unison with those around me.

How shall we spend these dark days? Will you go off on a a courageous adventure to another land and come back with a report that the world is still full to bursting? Will you tell me the story of being stuck in the rain and being welcomed into a stranger's house (this is not safe! I will think) and sitting by the fire with them until the wee hours of the morning?

How shall we spend these dark days? Shall we move our bodies in unison up tall mountains until we can think of nothing but the pain in our legs and the difficulty breathing and the exhilaration of not giving up? Shall we devour rich and thoughtful food which is ever more vibrant for being shared, wondering that cheese and wine should exist at all?

How shall we spend these dark days? Will we smile shyly at the woman across from us on the bus with kind and knowing eyes and be exhilarated when she returns the gesture? Shall we share our deepest and darkest truths, the stories which define us, even though they still carry a bitterness and pain in the retelling? Shall we aim for the very marrow of things and ignore the insufferable discomfort of honesty?

If the days ahead are indeed dark, I intend to spend them next to you. With you. Close enough that I will, on occasion, remember that awful joke you tell, the edges of my lips turning upward involuntarily.