To An Old Love,
TODAY I decided to burn the old letters that you sent me. They are still in the now-faded writing set box that my mother gave me one Christmas in the early 1970s. What if I died tonight? Aging is a great reminder of the unpredictability of mortality and the pieces that other people have to pick up when it strikes.
I couldn’t do it. I’ve composed many replies to you inside my head over the years, but it is the thought of yours, disappearing into smoke, that prompts me to write these words to you.
I’m catapulted back down the tunnel to when I was 18 and totally captivated by your blond curls, dancing eyes and charisma that you could cut with a knife. I wasn’t the only one. Others, better looking and more forward than me, curried favour with you. Once when I was hitchhiking, I got a lift with you and your friend. Totally tongue-tied, I didn’t speak a word. Just after Christmas of that year, we met at a party… you strumming out the Dylan hits. In a brief exchange of smiles, a whirlwind was born and in the early part of the next year, all was right with my world.
We embarked on long walks in woodland and at the seaside, cocooned in our mutual love of the tranquillity. We sat in your car and watched the frosty twinkling stars in the January night sky.
‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue, the road was full of mud, you came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form, come in, she said, I’ll give ya shelter from the storm’. I wore your big overcoat, as Dylan gave us ‘Shelter from the Storm’. Kisses soft and warm, it was a time of innocence and promise. Seemed like it could stay that way forever. But like astronauts dragged back into gravity, the baggage that we both carried began to grow heavier, more so on your part. You began to find flaws. I would always be the silent type, willing to suffer some cracks in what was really only the seeds of a love that could blossom. You wanted more. We began to drink more than was good for either of us, as we both experienced the pain. When you left, my world fell apart. I couldn’t see that I was so young, with a whole life ahead. I moved away to try and forget the failure of such a brief but compelling relationship. It haunted me for years. Then I met someone different and embarked on a whole new life. The ghost was always there, though. I know now that it could never have been anything other than it was, a brief intense shot at total connection, too fragile to survive the onslaughts of the everyday. Romeo and Juliet was never going to have a happy ending. Looking back through the lens of experience, I’m amazed at how pragmatic I am about it now. I can hardly recognise my younger self and the angst that we both suffered when it didn’t work out.
You once wrote to me: ‘Would you look for me, though I be in Valhalla itself ’ and later ‘don’t understand me too quickly’. I’m not sure that I’ve done either, but now none of that matters as much as it did back then, so much else has happened to me and to you also, I’m sure.
I wasn’t very good at expressing my thoughts back then. It has been an acquired skill for me.
So, I suppose, to conclude — I would like you to know that of course I can never forget you. Even if I get Alzheimer’s, I think the memory of that brief magic will remain. A blackbird with a glowing yellow beak just sat on the table outside my window and warbled one brief tune to me, before flitting off in the morning rain. I’m reminded of the little flowers and ferns that you used to emboss on to the pages of your letters. I’ve put them all back into the box, which now in itself holds so much memory. Maybe I’ll put this letter with them, and let destiny decide who reads or burns them.
Sending you whispers of happiness on the morning breeze. Hope life is good as the circle completes itself.
Axx Name and address with editor