I waved goodbye. He didn’t see me, facing the other way, obscured by a pillar. By the time I moved round he has gone out of sight. If he wasn’t taken I don’t know how I could have let him leave.
We had stared at each other the night before, knowing we would soon have to say goodbye. But I have said goodbye before, and this is not the same.
This is my second Christmas without Ben. It feels as though a lifetime has passed in the blink of an eye. The rebuilding of a life on strong foundations. A new home. A new love. The same shared goals.
As I lay in bed at night the missing mingles together, intertwined in a way that brings tears of sadness and hope all at once. How can I miss him so much yet be so happy to love another all in the same moment. I am full of pain and joy in equal measure.
The love I have for Ben never diminishes, and I wondered, with that love taking up all my heart, how another could ever find space.
But I have grown another chamber. It wasn’t empty before because it didn’t exist and now can I feel it growing with every look, every kiss, every shared experience. It exists alongside the other, the second gaining strength from the first. They take up the same space, not replacing but adding to.
As we share our separate Christmas we are together. The remembering, the hope, the promises of past, present and future. And as I look to the new year I smile. I have been taught to take life and grab it. I won’t let this slip through my fingers. They will grow together.
And I wonder how it is, that in adding to my own pot of love, I am somehow loved more. Not despite, but because.
At Louise's House 