Love Notes

Everyday there are little things that remind me of my love. Emotions ebb and flow all day long with the reminders she isn’t here.* I think of her almost every moment of the day as there is always this piece that feels like I am missing. Like she should be here where I can turn around and say, “hey will you remind me to add cat treats to the grocery list,” or as we did - just share our daily life together.

Michaela was self employed and I helped her with her business too. Her office was right in our house so we were together pretty much 24/7. When she had work that took her out of town, I went with just because we liked traveling together, but also because again I helped her with her work. I was her sidekick.

Before the years of smart phones and sometimes even now, I hand wrote packing lists. Today a notepad was needed to take some notes and from the stash of notepads came this one that had pages written in it - several pages were packing lists. Next to one packing list was scribbled in Michaela’s handwriting, “I love you” with a heart. I don’t remember the exact story of it - but most likely she happened upon it sitting on the kitchen counter and added that so I had a little moment of joy and love sparked by seeing it.

I knew she was like that. She created little moments and loved adventure. She was spontaneous and also planned out things to create beautiful memories. I knew all that. I knew it, but I will say I don’t think I grasped it - in it’s entirety. I am not sure I can explain this, but I am going to try.

I always appreciated when we had those moments. I stayed present in those moments, enjoying it so much, and feeling grateful. I also feel to some extent took them for granted. Now we won’t have those moments again. We won’t have a trip together to California for a birthday so we could whale watch. I won’t open a cupboard to find a note from her taped to a mug saying, “have an amazing day my love.” She won’t come out of her home office and say, “let’s take a couple hours and play a board game” or “let’s go take a drive and get coffee.” All those moments with her won’t happen again.

The scrap of paper that says I love you will be put in a scrapbook because I won’t have any more love notes from her again. So no I feel I didn’t appreciated her enough. I had the best of the best in partners for me. We meshed in ways that I don’t ever feel I can explain adequately. No one can replace her or what we had together, and now every single day I get that in ways I never knew would mean so much to me now without her. Hanging on to that love note, crying, grateful to have it, and also know I won’t ever have a new one left for me from her.

* here meaning physically here right now. Often when I say things like “I wish she was here.” People’s automatic response is, “she is here with you.” Although I believe she is here with me in spirit with her energy here with me, she isn’t here physically and that is what I mean by “I wish she was here.”