"The term 'love of my life' is an affectionate way to refer to someone
you deeply care for and cherish. If you designate someone as the 'love
of your life', it implies that you share
a special bond
with them that is often
romantic
in nature but not necessarily. The
connection
is so intense and profound that it surpasses all others."
She was the one. She was the love of my life. And if you say
there's been more than one "love of your life" in your life, that ain't
it. There's only one love of your life (if there's one at all) in the
sense I'm distinguishing the love of my life, the profundity of which
is something I didn't fully grasp until long after she died. In our
too-short time together, we didn't marry. Yet now in retrospect nearly
fifty five years later, it's apparent to me that she was
the love of my life.
Being around
her was enough. I didn't love her because we enjoyed the same
music
(even though we did). We didn't depend on
commoninterests
or any mutually enjoyed activities (to be sure, there were those also -
they just weren't the be-all and the end-all of what melded us
together). There's only one way to say this: I loved her because I
loved her; she loved me because she loved me. That was
it. That was all. It was
full onpassion.
She was the one.
In the existential esoterica of our relationship, my
sense of Self
shifted. Two questions
showed up
for me: "What would I do without you?" I asked her, my head in her lap,
she stroking my hair, and "Who will I be when you die?" (the thought
that I might die before her, had never occurred to me). And the truth
of the matter was that I didn't have satisfactory answers to either
question, the prospects of both of which intimidated and daunted me.
But I kept looking.
Then one day she did die - just ... like ... that. She was
ready. I wasn't.
Sad,
I wept when I heard the news.
Through my tears,
I knew something great had ended (or at least had
shape-shifted) and would probably never
show up
for me again on
the planet.
A few years without her dragged
inexorably
on. Then one day -
out of the blue
- like a
bird flying
in through my window and alighting on my shoulder, the answer to "Who
will I be when you die?" came to me.
"Wow! I finally
figured it
out!"
I blurted out to her (she was
present
in the space we are, even if no longer in
the physical world):
"Given my experience of who I was when you were here, and given my
experience of who I am now that you're gone, my answer to 'Who will I
be when you die?' is this: who I'll be when you die is the
same person I was when you were here!". It sounded trite, obvious. But
look: if it weren't (that is to say, if I were that it weren't),
it would neither respect nor honor her or me or our relationship. Of
course I'll be the same person I was! Anything less,
renders our relationship inauthentic.
Isn't there a breach of
integrity,
isn't there a denial of responsibility in "What would I do without
you?". Isn't there an avoidance of authenticity, isn't there an absence
of intentionality in "Who will I be when you die?". Arguably, the love
of one's life
shows up
knowingly or unknowingly in
a context of integrity,
responsibility, authenticity, and intentionality. Why, then, would her
death change anything about that, or about me? Why, then, would I be
anybody else different after she died than I was before? And if
something happened and I was somebody else after she died, wouldn't it
diminutize who we were before?
Ironically, it's when I experience life without the one(s)
I love, that I realize there's no way around discovering Self by
itSelf with its fullness, wholeness, and completeness, to be
fully human.
Who I'll be when you die, is who I be'd before you died. And nothing
less. My love neither protects nor distracts me.