She Saved My Heart

There is magic in a heart that has been torn apart and rebuilt.

Don’t know if she would agree or maybe I should say I don’t know if she would admit she does. She might. She has surprised me more than once, first by reminding me that love was so much greater and deeper than I had remembered or believed.

If I told you about how she squeezed my bicep and gently held on to it as we walked you might roll your eyes or not care. You might not care or understand if I told you how every time she slipped her hand into mine it felt like it could stay forever and that is ok.

You don’t have to understand, accept or believe because it is not your deal, it is ours.

And if I told you about how she made sure I got the scan that confirmed my heart was clear of obstruction you might nod your head and say so what again and that would still be ok.

Ok because it is the little moments that matter and when you lie awake in the dark and think about whose eyes you see during night or day it makes an impact on you.

The Rituals Of Life

I don’t know if she and I ever discussed the rituals of life but they exist. Some of them are big things and some are little but I liked those we had time to develop together and those yet to come.

If I told you she is an Eishes Chayil, a Woman of Valor you might ask for a deeper explanation. She’d probably yell at me for saying it, tell me it is not true or to think harder about what I am saying but in the quiet of the night she’d wonder why I said it.

And if she asked, I’d answer…

Because.

Sometimes there is joy in being non specific, especially when people know you are capable of communicating with precision and detail except sometimes you can’t.

Sometimes you can’t because you asking someone to explain why a sky painted in streaks of orange, blue and red is beautiful or why certain chords make your heart jump.

Sometimes you can’t because your fingers extend into the sky and touch the face of god, because sometimes when two people share a moment in time it changes them and lasts forever.

And that is why I look for rituals.

Because sometimes the simple ritual is the most meaningful and most beautiful. Sometimes sitting next to or across from someone who has eyes the light dances in and a smile that lights up their face is the most meaningful thing of all.

Could be pizza and beer or a fine steak and cocktails–neither matters because the two of you take that moment in time and transform it.

Sometimes We Call It Melodrama

Sometimes we ask hard questions and fear makes us call the answer or the question melodramatic. We ask the other what would happen if they were to hear we had died in a car crash or what they would do if they heard we were terminally ill.

It is not because we hope for or want such things but because sometimes that piece of us that doesn’t operate based upon sight or sound but upon gut feeling instructs us to pay attention to losing the opportunity to have more moments.

Sometimes you react and respond by asking, what would you do if you heard I died. What would you do if I called you and said that there was a more definite answer to how long I was going to be walking upon this earth.

Would you respond by saying our time has always been finite and this is all we were granted or would you say no. Would you do what you had to do to try to slow or stop those sands of time.

The answers are important but hopefully we will never learn for real what they are.

But if I said it would tear apart what had been rebuilt it would be honest and if I said I would want you to rebuild yours so would that.

Still, I don’t really worry or think often about such things. Don’t do it because the numbers say there is no real reason to do so. The numbers that the actuaries use and that statisticians rely upon says don’t and that speaks volumes.

Not as much as the feeling in my gut or the song in my heart because those are the truer measures I monitor. Don’t care if that makes me sound like a crack or a crank.

I do as I do and feel as I feel and none can tell me that is right or wrong, it simply is.

She Saved My Heart

Those four words should be enough. They should be enough for any person or so the Greek poets might say because some of them love their tragedies.

They love a hero with a tragic flaw. They love to tell a story about magic and magnificence destroyed by some simple and obvious flaw.

But there are other poets and other writers who dare to paint a different picture. Ones who understand that a heart can be broken and rebuilt many times and that there is more magic in the night sky than that exposed by small slivers of moonlight.

Some dare to walk upon the long and winding road because they know they are the kind of person who takes the long way home.

Those who dare to be more, to have more and to do more have to accept the burden of walking through the fallow fields as well as the green. The only way to get to the other side is to go through.

And once you accept that you survived the moments that you thought would stop you in your tracks and understand how to read the map upon the scars, well then you are on your way, aren’t you.