Where there is love...

Can love be measured? When we fall in love for the first time usually we tend to ask, how much do you love me? Even a child stretches her hands behind her back and says, “I love you this much! All the way to the moon and back!”

Only if that was true; then what happens when we part from each other. Either by choice or by fate or by death. People move on, everyone says time is the solution for every sorrow; you will heal over time; just give some time. If one is clinging to the memories and other person is embracing the life and moving on; how would you measure their love? Who loved the lost one more?

If we ever get some solitude then why do all those memories keep whirling back? Imagine some evening when no one is home; its cloudy outside and you are just sitting at your windowpane- looking at the stormy clouds gathering up in the sky. In no time your mind starts reflecting that storm inside- all those memories start surfacing up. May be it was that silly fight you had with your classmate or the prank against the teacher in which you got caught or a secret that you kept from parents about bunking school and going for a movie. It just keeps perturbing that maybe we should have shared it, expressed our unsaid feelings. Then after many years we gather the courage to pick up the phone/write that email/send message- to make amends with our parents, lost friends or even first unexpressed love.

What would we do if we lose someone close to our heart forever, what if there is no second chance? How debilitated a person would be that time? World seems to pause for that moment, everything seems trifling. It feels like taking that next breath is a sin. How does it feel to attend a baby shower after having early miscarriage? And people expecting you to move on; telling you to find happiness somewhere else!

After a while we tend to believe- time is the only solution. We even try to fool ourselves with the age old saying that time can heal everything! It seems possible that one day we could wake up with no memories from past and could go on enjoying the breakfast on the same table –ignoring that empty chair. Again house could be filled with aroma of Christmas cookies. Life has to move on; right? Or does that mean now that seemingly unmeasurable love as well died with them?

Every spring when we witness new life quivering out of earth we tend to wonder how she would have loved working in her garden waiting for the blooms. Or where she would have planned to go for summer vacation? What could I have given him on this father’s day? What would have made him smile? Would she have approved my boyfriend? If she were alive she would have gone for prom this year.

Do such thoughts just stop coming to us after a while- when we lose our mom/dad/son/daughter/friend/neighbor? No, we carry them in our mind all the time. While enjoying their favorite dessert, or when a whiff of their favorite perfume passes by or …. simply until we are alive. Yes, we do drag our baggage everywhere.  There is no escape from it. No social gathering seems complete without our lost loved ones. When we see complete families that incompleteness becomes even more prevalent. We just swallow our tongue, put on a smile and show others- we are fine. Pretend that time has worked its magic- everyone lost is forgotten!

But secretly we are just saying, “I will keep loving you forever, from all the way to the moon and back….”