I dropped the fork and knife atop the napkin on the counter and ran to hug her tight.
She's a part of a different memory. The first true love of the one we miss and from a time before so many people knew.
Seeing her brings a different part of him back. And she does something different than a lot of the early friends do, or even the recent ones...
she speaks his name.
Each and every time I see her, which isn't nearly often enough she speaks his name.
She brings him back with the purposeful inflection of her voice. She demands his presence between us in a need to have that old connection. I understand it and am even grateful for it.
I see so many things in the moment of silence we have after she says it. Beaches and campfires, teenagers walking on broken glass from downed vodka bottles, pimples and rock show posters we made. Lunch hour in the hangout spot, crossing the territories, attempting to understand new things. New things, like love and friendships that last forever.
I wonder sometimes if being able to be enveloped in those types of sentimentality would have helped him, or if it would have been just as painful as everything else had become. And I wonder if he hadn't have left would it even all mean as much as it does now?
And it left me hurting again just like it always does to reconnect to those moments. Left me hurting and missing.
I will always miss you.
