It’s more. It’s deeper. Both innocent and indemnifying at the same time.

It’s putting the lie to THE END. It’s creating a possibility of AND THEN.

And I just don’t know how to reconcile the two.

I sit up in bed and twist on the bedside lamp and reach for the book.

At some point, I think you just have to jump. It’s hard and scary when you’re young, when your heart is new and fresh and unscarred. You’re risking so much, then. Trusting the virgin vulnerability of your precious, secret heart, and you have no guarantee how it’ll turn out. His POV. You dive in, headfirst, terrified. Wonder of wonders, it turns out more amazing than you could ever expect. Joy is such an effervescent thing, isn’t it? The giddy happiness of true love is the purest emotion a human can experience. That sacred falling, the majestic weaving of two lives, two souls, two personalities into a single entity…that, I believe, is the meaning of life. The big WHY.

And then it’s taken from you.

You hear those words, “I’m sorry, sir, but your wife didn’t make it. We did everything we could.”

And suddenly, you’re not you anymore. Your face looks back at you from the mirror and your hands are the hands that have sat at the ends of your wrists all these years of your life, but you’ve been scooped hollow by the vicious talons of Loss. And you’re not you.

You wallow. Grieve. Drown. Moving on is a joke, right? That’s for people who didn’t love the way you did.

But then. Oh, but then. You meet HER. And somehow, the sun might just be trying to peek out from behind the haze of storm clouds that have followed you. There just might be something like a tomorrow that doesn’t include barrels of whiskey just to be able to fake a semblance of humanity.

Only, how do you get past this mountain that is grief, that is sorrow? It’s insurmountable. You didn’t WANT to get past it, over it, under it, around it. You wanted it to just bury you and be done.

SHE makes you think maybe you’re not done. Not yet.

And what I’m coming to, what I’m realizing, is that you just have to jump.