Letting Love Go

Still working on more Fragments of Fiction. One of these days I have to take the Fragments and weave them together.

I got the call in the middle of the night. The sharp ring of the telephone startled me awake. For a brief moment I thought that it was the alarm clock and got ready to go shower and get ready for the day. The continued ringing made me realize my mistake and I picked up the handset. With a muffled voice I mumbled something into the phone and waited for an answer.

The response made me gasp and go numb. It wasn't like the movies. I didn't drop the phone. I didn't start to scream hysterically or sob. I just lay there in disbelief. You were gone. Death had robbed us of our future and now I had no future.

Ok, none of that actually happened. I sometimes wish that it did. It is kind of perverse to say that sometimes I wish that something so terrible had taken place. But sometimes it hurts too much to admit that I am the reason that our love was lost. The best thing in my life is gone because I let it go.

My grandmother used to say that the really lucky people fall in love three times. Two of them were to prepare you for the love of your life. I used to chuckle at the idea of training relationships. I told grandma that I'd like to quote her but I didn't want my lover to worry which number they were. The last thing I wanted to deal with was a fight based upon insecurity and a quote like that seemed destined to create distress.

I never imagined that one day I would sit here and wish that I had paid more attention to grandma. She was so very right. I have been in love more than once, more than twice. In fact you can say that grandma was right because the third time was more powerful than the first two combined. And it was only because I had been in love before that I realized so very clearly the superiority of the third.

Chances are that most of you have seen a movie or two that deals with this very topic. Two people fall madly in love and seem prepared to ride off into the sunset of a perfect life. However the dream is interrupted and somehow they are torn apart leaving broken hearts and the question of whether they'll ever find their way back to each other.

People like happy endings. They like to see the couple figure overcome the obstacles in their path reuniting in triumphant harmony.

My story doesn't have that happy ending. My story has all of the elements I listed above, except one. At the end there is no couple. There is only heartbreak and the bitterness of unfilled potential.