You Can Never Go Back

We are thieves of time. We disrespect and deny the inexorable movement of the river of life. Ignoring the reality within which we must swim. Death does not cheat us. We cheat life and then we bleat and moan as we finally have to face the finite fact of our existence.

Once, in the mists of my memories, someone told me that you can never go back. My recollection of this is limited to the words and their melodramatic delivery. I was left with the lasting impression that this phrase came from a film or TV series. If anything, this provenance added a gravity to the quote and I have carried it with me ever since. Perhaps I had an intuitive understanding that life flows in one way only and the past is a place we can never revisit. The past is a museum which contains entertaining exhibits and the odd useful lesson placed randomly and less than usefully in difficult to reach spots that make themselves known after the fact.

I applied the instinctive knowledge afforded by these five words liberally to my life. Always moving onwards in the hope there would be an upwards trajectory to the path I was intent upon following. Besides, to return cap in hand to a previous chapter held a certain ignominy to it and I dreaded that form of shameful defeat. Now I see that I was running from myself. That behind me stalked a mirror I was always supposed to peer into. This was a lesson intended for me well before now.

And here I am. I secretly swore to myself that I would never return here. Silent vows are the most powerful. There is no need to perform them for an audience. These are promises that you fulfil. The alternative is a death that consumes a person from the inside. Hollows them out so that all that is left is hell itself.

I convinced myself that there was nothing here for me. That this was a place I could never return to. My time here was done and I had nothing left to give as a result. Another hollow hell that I was wise to fear.

“And here you are,” I whisper the words wishing that they had not been said as they leave my dry mouth, “I loved you. I have always loved you. I was made to love you and you alone. Once you happened to me there was no going back. We both knew that. Some things are meant to be and I meant everything we ever did together. All of it. I’d not take a single word or action back.”

I don’t know how I got here. There is a fog that separates me from the rest of the world and the life I led prior to this moment. There is an inevitability to my presence here. The certainty of my return should frighten me, but all I have is resignation. However we choose in this life, some things will always come full circle. A gentle form of karma that draws us to what is meant for us. That is the pattern of our lives. A beginning and an end.

The beginning was more than I could ever have hoped for. I cannot run from the consequences. Besides, I paid my price. I have paid dearly for the riches of my life.

“What are the chances?” I say to her as I stand with my head bowed. Diminished in her presence but not lesser for it.

However big and clever we become, the best part of us is small in stature and it remains childish. We never cease being the child we started out life as, however loudly we deny that part of us. However much we attempt to hide from who we really are. We are vulnerable and needy. We can’t do this life alone. We are not made that way. Our attempts to create an armoured, invulnerable version of ourselves are doomed to abject failure and yet we try again and again to pretend that we are something we can never be. Boxing ourselves into a corner and lashing out at a world that won’t accept the game we play. A game that is spiteful and with rules that make no sense. A game with no winners. A game of loss and angry sorrow.

I play with the cap in my hands. Turning it around and around in a nervous imitation of the cycle of life. Now that I am here I don’t know what to do. I’ve never known what to do. Not for a long while anyway. I dropped my head and carried on in the same vein. Never losing sight of a light that shone at the end of the tunnel that my life became.

“Do I know you? Do I? I did once, but so much time has passed us both by. I have so much to tell you. I think you know it all anyway. But there is something in the telling. Keeping it inside is wrong somehow. Dangerous even. I feel like I’m smothering something too important to be contained within my heart any longer, but I’ve never known what to do with it. A wild animal that I fear will die if I let it loose into the world.”

I reach into my jacket pocket and feel the reassuring presence of the letters I have written. I pause and retrieve the closest one. This is the only one that is needed. After all this time, I’m still not ready. I don’t think we’re ever ready. Not for this. Never for this.

“I had to stay strong. You know why I had to. It wasn’t the same without you. I was half the man. You were my strength and my vision. You were the one who saw what could be. You knew what it was that we were supposed to do with this life of ours,” I take a deep breath and look down at the envelope. It doesn’t seem enough somehow. And yet it’s everything. “I doubt that strength now. It seemed the right thing at the time, but even then I knew I was a coward. Pretending to hold it together when I was a mess inside. Collapsing in on myself without the strength you gave me.”

Walking away isn’t a choice exactly. I’m doing it before I know it is something I have to do. Regrouping. Taking a breather. The door is open and I walk in. Taking a seat. I feel the cold wood underneath me and I shiver as I compose myself as best as I can.

Everything is different now. The years have painted it all with a gentle disguise. Closing my eyes I return to the day I now want to revisit for old time’s sake, and I watch her walking towards me. She is a radiance of change. A promise that transforms me and the rest of my life. Things will never be the same again. I die and I am reborn as I should be. I was a caterpillar and she told me how I should be beautiful. She showed me my wings and patiently taught me how to fly. Tamed me and made me far more than I knew how to be.

Since our parting I have met other women. They were warm and caring. Pretty in their own way. But after a short while she burned them all away, and all there was, was her and my love for her. Always my love for her. I have carried her with me always. She is my forever and I am hers. In our parting I knew there could never be a parting. I no longer knew who I was without her and so I held on to the best part of me as I held on to her.

I could not be without her. I never knew how to be without her. I replay that day from so long ago. One of many of my yesterdays. And I find I am smiling through my tears. I forget the cold until I try to stand up. Age seizes joints and complains about the wear and tear of living. Growing old is an inconvenience. But it’s better than the alternative.

Too early in this life of mine, I was handed a baton and when I looked up I found there was no one to hand it to. The race was mine to run and mine alone. I am done with running now. I have come to a halt in this place and I have to face the music. The music that has played gently in my heart ever since she left me.

Now I return to her and I hold the letter before me. This is my offering. This is my baton. I am ready now. I will hand it over and take a well-earned rest. There is a bench waiting for me and I hope she will sit with me. We have so much to talk about.

“I felt like…” I need to say this. I have to express this. Get the poison out from within me at long last, “you betrayed me! You left me on my own with your hopes and dreams and I didn’t know how to fulfil them!” I am shaking with the truth of this. An anger I have supressed for too long, “But in the end I did it. I managed to find a way because you were there with me all the way. You never left me. And I could never leave you. You were all I ever needed.”

I’m beating my chest as though I am helping my heart to beat within it. I keep drumming life into my body until I find myself lifted. Larger somehow. I rise and I experience a strange defiance. Yet another expression of my love for this woman. The love of my life. The love of our life. I continued to love our life even after she left me alone to live it. She’d shown me the way. She’d shown me how.

“I did it for you. All of it was for you. You were my reason to face each and every day and see it through to the end. You were every dawn and every dusk. We made a promise and I stuck to it. I couldn’t see any other way. There was no other way. Only you. You were the light on the darkest of my days.”

I point at the building to my right, “we made the only promise worth keeping in there. Then we made Sam. You’d be so proud of him. I see so much of you in him and in our grandchildren. Pippa and Noah have your smile and that stubborn determination that makes everything happen. They’re all dreamers too. They have big ideas like you did. You gave me your map, the one you filled with your dreams, and I’ve followed it ever since.”

Smiling, I kneel and place the letter on the ground, “I wrote the important words down. I didn’t know whether I could ever say them. They hurt too much. But now, they don’t. I feel lighter for having said them. For coming here to see you and thank you for everything. For choosing me and filling me with a love that I have celebrated with every breath I’ve taken.”

I try to regain my feet, but find that I no longer have the strength. I feel tired now I have said what I came to say. This is fitting. I remember the two times I knelt beside her. The two times I bent my knee and bowed my head. The first time led us to the building beside us.

“You grinned at me and asked what had kept me so long. You never actually said yes, you know.”

There was no need for her to say yes. We were already committed to each other by then and there was no going back. We could never go back. We’d shared too much to go back. This was a one-time deal and we were both all in. Sometimes the choice is made before you know you’ve made it.

The second time I knelt like this, was the last time we were together, “you’d given birth to Sam. He was so beautiful. I never knew a human being could be perfect, but then I met our son and my life changed for a second time. I’m so glad you saw him before you left. I saw your face as you gazed down at him and I knew we shared the same deep love for the child we had made together. And I knew Sam was going to be alright. How could he not be, when he was loved the way he was from the moment he came into this world? Then I held your hand and I watched the light go out of you. But it never went out in me. I’ve carried it with me ever since. You’ve been with me every step of the way and Sam knows that. He knows you for that love. As do his children.

I hold the top of her gravestone now. My weary head remains bowed. Too heavy to lift. My race is run and I feel so tired. The letter is laying there where I placed it. It seems so far away, “third time is a charm,” the words come slowly and quietly, “you said that didn’t you?”

I see her then. Smiling. Always smiling. Reaching her hand out to me. Taking mine in hers.

“I’ve missed you so,” I tell her, returning her smile and meaning that smile for the first time since she left me, “I feel so tired. So very tired.”

I lower my head further and feel her breast against my cheek. Hear the beating of her gentle, loving heart. Impossibly loud. Soothing. Calling me to where I must go. Closing my eyes and resting at last as the beat quietens, eventually falling into eternal silence.