After I Do

That’s when I fall apart. I don’t melt like butter or deflate like a tire. I shatter like glass, into thousands of pieces.

My heart is truly broken. And I know that even if it mends, it will look different, feel different, beat differently.

I knew that I would give myself to him, that I would bare my soul to him, that I would let him break my heart if that’s what it came to.

“Maybe we’re just cosmically linked,”

“Maybe we’re just cosmically linked,”

It’s a lesson learned by those who have faced the most miserable of tragedies, and it’s a secret that I suspect you yourself already know: the sun will always rise. Always.
The sun rises the next day after mothers lose their babies, after men lose their wives, after countries lose wars. The sun will rise no matter what pain we encounter. No matter how much we believe the world to be over, the sun will rise. So you can’t go around assessing love by whether or not the sun rises. The sun doesn’t care about love. It just cares about rising.

Do you want to be there for the last moments of one life or the first moments of another? Do you honor the past or ring in the future?

He’s so gentle about it, so loving, that I wonder how I was able to wipe away my own tears all these past months. In an instant, I have forgotten how to live without him, now that he is here.

He runs toward me and picks me up, grabbing me, clutching me.
“I love you,” he says. He has started to cry. “I love you, Lauren, I love you so much. I’ve missed you. God, I’ve missed you.”
My face hasn’t changed. I’m still stunned. My arms are wrapped around him. My legs are wrapped around him. He puts me down and kisses me. When his lips touch mine, my heart burns. It’s like someone lit a match in my chest.
How did he know I needed him? How did he know to find me?

It’s Ryan. It’s always been Ryan. Just because I can live without him doesn’t mean I want to.

I often think of my grandmother as the old lady at the dinner table. But she’s seen generations. She was a child once. She was a teenager. A newlywed. A mother. A widow.