On Those That I Miss

Your words are always simple, but I know that your feelings touch depths that some are too afraid to explore. I miss you, Tay! I really miss you! And I know that you do. I can feel your pained, voided, heavy heartbeat behind those words; the longing of a mother for her child, for late nights watching Forrest Gump, for walks to the coffee shop, for laughing off irritation and realizing that we’re not as hardened as we feel.

I translate your simple, I really miss yous, to, Please come home. I’m hurting and I really wish you were here to laugh with me.

We’re both really good at laughing.
We’ve both been healed by our laughter.
//
I remember that time we were house-sitting and they had a cat whose purr sounded like people chatting outside. I’ve shared a little of that moment with other people and now that cat’s little purr has turned into an inside joke.

If I miss one thing about you, I miss your humor. I realize now how it’s so much like mine.
There is that temptation to take my missing the way you made me laugh and turn it into longing for who we were and then bitterness for that no longer being available to me.

I’m seeing though, the wisdom in not plucking a flower in order to take its beauty for my own possession, but rather, leaving it planted so that it may remain alive and beautiful.

So I will leave our memory a memory and no longer try to morph it back into a reality. Seasons are seasons. They are born and they are taken away by the wind.

Our sorrow has carved much room in my heart for joy.