I could feel you forgetting me. I felt it in the bottom of my stomach and in the deepest caverns of my heart. I could feel you quickly moving on. I understood that you were beginning to leave me behind and there was nothing I could say. Nothing I could do. No way I could reach out to you. No way I could yell out your name. No way my hand could simply graze the back of your neck like it used to and whisper those three words in your ear. I no longer had any claim over you. You were like dry ice, I had you for a while but then you began to vaporize. You began to drift away from me. And even though I could still see you there was no way I could hold on to you. Each time I reached out you would slip through my fingers and drift even farther away, leaving a bigger gash in my hear. In my life. I was scared that in time you would completely forget who I was and what we had. There was no way I could engrain myself into your memory, no way I could stop you from forgetting me. I guess in a way it was I who was drifting away from you. You were losing your memory, rapidly. And maybe you were trying to hold on, Landen. Maybe you really were. But I couldn’t feel it. You accepted the defeat. And that was possibly the hardest thing I had to watch.

As if we had a chance. We never did. The odds were always against us. It was like swimming upstream. We were constantly fighting against life. When my Mom died. When you moved away. When you had your stroke and began to forget me. The die never landed on the number we needed. The cards were never turned in our favor. And that, I believe was just another thing that tore us apart.

We were both chasing after lost dreams. We were both following paths that didn’t exist. We both knew that in the end we really don’t have control over the big things that happen to us. I didn’t understand it at the time. Maybe I don’t even understand it now. And maybe there isn’t even anything to understand! Maybe it was just how things unfolded. Maybe thats how it was always going to happen. Or maybe it wasn’t foreordain at all. Maybe the road we were on changed with each step we took. Not destiny. Not fate. Just ever changing life. I don’t know. I’ll never know. I wish I did. But would it change anything? Would it really matter? No. It wouldn’t.

It wouldn’t matter if I knew. Because now you have forgotten me. Because now I have become such a distant memory. Like an empty hourglass. Sometimes when you look at it you can see where the sand used to be. You can see how the sand filled up that hourglass and gave it purpose. Because without sand the hourglass is just plain glass shaped in a funny way. It cannot keep time. It cannot be what it was intented to be.

I know that those who live in the past limit their future. And so this is the last time I will look back. I’ll find some new way to fill up that hourglass. Maybe with marbels. Maybe with new sand. Maybe it wont be a soft flour the other sand. Maybe it wont be beautiful yet full of flaws. And maybe the new sand wont fill it up to the brim, like its supposed to. Maybe it wont be perfect. Maybe the new sand will have clumps in it, just like my life will from now on. I will hit road bumps. But compared to this? I know I’ll be able to keep going.

The other sand was never perfect, either. I wouldn’t want it to be. Because perfection doesn’t make you real at all. It is the mistakes and the tears and the laughter and the faults and the blemishes and the disfigurements and our weaknesses that make people real. That made us real.

So I won’t look back again with tears of sorrow. I’ll look back and see your face, those shocking blue eyes of yours and that crooked little half smile. And that will be all I will need. The memory of you. And I will know that you are watching over me. And I will know that you are taking care of me. I will know that you will protect me. Just like you did when you were here with me. Even though now you are gone.


But you really aren’t. Because I can’t possibly believe that someone as beautiful and loving as you could just go. So stay with me. I know you will.