Summertime
makes me miss you.
It’s
amazing how our minds and bodies work, how one smell, one sound can take us
back to a place in time that we haven’t thought about in so long. We started our journey together in the
summer, spending the long nights sitting outside on benches around the city,
attempting to soak up as much knowledge about one another as our brains would
absorb. Many of those bench moments were
spent stealing kisses in the night as we sat closely together, limbs
intertwined. Those moments were my
favorite, full of innocence and excitement of getting to know someone new. Back before things got beautifully
complicated.
The
smell of the gym in the summer makes me think of you constantly, daydreaming
back to when we first met and to where we spent much of our time together in
the beginning of our relationship. Back
to when I would casually stride into your office, arriving earlier than I
needed to, just for a chance to chat with you.
Back to when you would randomly pop your head into my class like an
absolute creeper, but I found it hilarious anyway. Back to when we were keeping our newly found
attraction to each other under wraps for at first and we would linger around
the gym, waiting for all of our friends to go home so we could get in the car
together and make a late dinner run to Waffle House. The smell of summer, the feel of summer, the
sounds of summer – they all take me back to you. My thoughts completely skip every other
summer that I’ve had in my 27 years and circle back to you.
Today I
pulled out the “Richard” box for the first time since January. I pulled out the stack of pictures, bypassing
the letters from you and the cards from so many people after you died, though
had I had more energy I would have sifted through those as well. I looked at you in all of those pictures and
became overwhelmed by emotion. It is
still so hard to grasp the concept of you being gone. It is still so hard to understand why God
chose me to spend your final days with.
It is still so hard to fathom that you
chose me to spend your final days with, though of course you didn’t even know
they were your last. God tethered our
hearts together as soon as we met and I am forever grateful that I had the
chance to know, love, and share so much with such an incredibly intricate
person. I look at those pictures and
everything comes flooding back – the conversations, the struggles, the jokes,
the happiness, the pain of each moment. There
is a, and I suppose always will be though maybe not as prominent, a hole in my
heart that is reserved for you. You,
sweet Richard, saw me for everything I was and for everything I wanted to
be. You loved me with an unconditional
love that I did not deserve. You taught
me so much about strength, determination and grace. So much about grace. I often wonder when these feelings of
nostalgia will go away. Will they ever
go away?
Summertime makes me miss you.