Today I am celebrating a birthday, alone, in a home that I am leaving behind. Maybe not alone. I am surrounded with memories, a lifetime of happiness and sorrows. My love, who left this physical realm some 13 years ago surrounds me. My birthday was such a big event for him. I feel his presence, physically. Strangely what I feel is not sadness. Nor it is happiness. The best description is acceptance and serenity. It is, maybe, what is described as closure.
When my son was a child, when we moved from one country to another, I used to tell him 'Home is not a place, it is where we are together as a family'. He accepted it, it made him feel safe. Today I am experiencing the same.
The ride to the airport, the flight, and arrival to Beirut airport were an odd experience; a sort of dissociative stage where I was looking at myself from a distance. The moment I got in the car on the way home. I felt my love in the car with me. Opening the house door became an act of love. It is the place that protected us and witnessed most of our struggles, our victories, and failures.
Sorting and packing what I wanted to take with me, giving furniture and 'things' to friends and family, the rest to charity was tiring, the planning difficult and the emotional baggage heavy. Heartbreaking was having to give up letters, cards, small love you Knick-knacks.... I could not take them all, so had to choose...
Moving is no longer an act of sorrow but of love. It will remain a witness to our love and will not be desecrated by yearning and longing. Now the circle is complete, and I know for certainty that you are with me wherever I am. I can't let you go, it's unnatural, you belong to me, I belong to you. A part of you has grown in me. And so, you see, it's you and me together forever and never apart.
Now the circle is complete. I will always smile to my inner self where my love lives.
92.
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