Holes

Some times people leave your life and they leave a hole where they used to be.  In your life. In your heart.  Even in your day, sometimes, if they were the type to interact with you daily. 

And you try to fill the hole that they left with other things, other people, other distractions.  Because the reality is that in life people come and go, and mostly, we are helpless to stop them.  (Resistance is futile, damnit!)  We hope that they'll stay awhile, enjoy our company, and never want to go, but usually there comes a time and they must be on their way.

One of my friends reminded me of this just over three years ago.  She sent me this e-mail about how people are in your life for a moment, a season, or a life-time.  That sometimes people are just there for a reason for that moment, and when that moment or that season is passed, so does the friendship or relationship.  At the time she sent it was a particularly difficult morning for me as I was beginning to recognize and accept that my relationship with my wife - something that was supposed to be forever - was over.   I wasn't ready to accept those words of wisdom, that encouraged letting people go when it was time.  I remember screaming loudly in my (fortunately private) office that morning when I read her e-mail and took that next step in accepting what was.  (I have, since, for the most part accepted that - and that is not what this is about)

I've never been particularly good at letting go.  You can tell because this is a theme that I keep revisiting.  Because I can't let go, easily.

That Dalai Lama says to find those things in your life that bring you happiness and hold onto them.  That's all I've been trying to do... 

In the meantime, I do my best with what I have to try and fill the hole that has been left by someone very dear to me.  Some days - particularly hormonal days like today that make me more emotional - are harder than others.  Sometimes everywhere I look I see where she once was but is not now.   I want to hear her voice, her "luv ya" at the end of a phone call, at the end of an e-mail, or at the end of a text.  Feel her arms holding me tight both in happiness and in sadness.  Her holding my hand in compansionship.  Someone to laugh at my jokes.  To just give me that smile that brightens my day.  And to be someone special to her.  To know that my presence, too, has brightened her day...

There is a hole there where she used to be... and no matter how hard I dig, I just can't seem to fill it...