Live to the Max

It’s been 135 days, and I’m afraid I’ve forgotten. 

What did it feel like to wake up in my former reality, when you were alive? 

How did it feel to go through a day without an unexpected ache brought on by any random smell or sound? 

What was it like when I felt like going places, and doing things, instead of lying in bed with the lights off? 

What was it like to be free of this crushing pain? 

I’m afraid I‘ve forgotten. 

Your smile. Your voice. Your laugh. Each precious memory with you cast in the starring role. Oh, I will never forget you. Every detail that was uniquely you will be carefully curated in the museum of my heart until I take my last breath. You are unforgettable.

It’s the version of me before devastation that I can’t quite connect with anymore. What was she thinking, feeling, or experiencing? She had it so good but didn’t even know it. 

Now, all I know is pain. It’s under every rock and lurking behind every corner. It’s in my waking and in my sleeping. Everywhere I go, everything I do, there is pain. 

I can no longer access what it felt like to not have this gaping hole in my chest. What was it like to not be totally crushed? Oh, how I would love to feel it once more. To know all was right and good in my world. 

Looking backwards I now know it was an extraordinary time that had simply become ordinary. Too ordinary. So ordinary that it is now impossible to recall the peace I once knew. 

I failed to savor the beauty in the ordinary. I never feared it would be taken from me. 

I should have been afraid. Afraid to undervalue such a precious gift, wholeness. I should have been afraid of forgetting.

If I could, I would shake her saying, “Feel this! Memorize it! Capture what your heart feels like right now. This is the best it will ever be. This is the good stuff, right now. This feeling will never return…never.” 

But it cannot be. There is no turning back now. What is forgotten is now gone. 

I remain crushed under the weight of losing you with a craving for wholeness that will never be satisfied. Oh, to live an ordinary, forgettable life once more. 

I’m afraid I’ve forgotten all that I should have been afraid of forgetting.