The letter

“Till we meet again, Let my heart rest content in this knowledge

I will love you, always and forever.”

The first time I read those words, they felt so corny and filmy. I used to find it so peculiar, the way you always ended your letters with those lines. I think I even teased you about it once. I’m glad you didn’t stop writing those words. Because I realised the beauty in those simple words gradually.

It seems like we’ve always been writing letters to each other, hasn’t it ? Even when were growing up together, you always used to send me little written messages in class and I always used to reply to them. I was amazed to see that you had saved them all from so many years ago. Did you always know we were destined to end up together?

Marrying you is the best thing I have ever done. Being in the army teaches you to love your nation, but nothing compares to the whole hearted, unconditional love that one feels for an individual. In you, I find a reason to be alive, to continue when all seems lost, to believe in angels when faced with the threat of devils.

I love you. You know that by now. When I look back through all that life has thrown at me, the best moments are the ones I shared with you. It is in the happiness of coming back to you. It is in the joy of seeing you smile. It is in the kisses unseen and secrets unspoken that we alone share. It is in wanting to be a better person for your sake.

I always wonder about the future : what our kids would look like, where we will go for our next holiday together, how you will look as you age and whether you will still love me when I grow fat and have white hairs.

I’m not a fool. I know there’s no point in thinking of all this. It’s been a year since you’ve gone. Every day I suffer through the memory all over again. The call from your parents. The irony of it all – being away to defend the country’s borders only to lose the most precious person in my life to some random moment of madness of people unknown , looking to support their corrupt political leader by causing riots. None of it mattered, of course. You are a faceless victim to them all. That man is still free and running the city while we are separated for life.

There are a lot of young folk where I serve presently. Whenever they talk about home, I tell them not to neglect the ones they love. I tell them not to be afraid to tell the ones they love how they feel and not worry how it may make them dependent and vulnerable. Because that feeling of dependence on the one you love is no crutch – it is a loving shoulder on which they can rest their head when they feel they can’t carry on. The way being with you made all my worries disappear. 

I see the pity in their eyes. I wish I could make it more clear to them. I wish they would look beyond the pity and pain and see the one thing that gets drowned when my eyes start to tear up – the truth in my words.

Friends still set me up with new girls. They tell me it’s time to move on. Move on from where, I wonder ? How can you move on when your reason to be alive no longer exists ? They do set me up at functions... rich girls, talkative girls, sweet girls, beautiful girls, modern girls... all kinds of girls. They’re all that... but as you used to say whenever you caught me staring at anyone else, “they’re not you.”

I’m scared. What if I was destined to be with you and I lost my chance forever? What if I never find someone else like you? How can I trust my heart to try to feel for someone else the way I felt for you? And how can I expect her to love me inspite of my flaws... the way you did – the way you’d place your head under the pillow to drown out my snores? Or the way you hated my 5 o’clock shadow but still kissed me anyway ? Or the way you’d readily give up the Tv remote and your favourite serials so that I could watch the match? ( It was much later that I realised that you would watch the reruns the next morning so you never really missed anything – to think of all the dishes you made me wash in return!! )

The truth is I’m lost. I’m still finding myself and what I am without you. I’m steadily realising that I may never be as great a person as I felt when you were beside me. I’m sitting alone at my desk – our desk and writing this, just as you probably sat here many nights writing to me while I was away. There are so many more things to say to you, but they mean nothing unless you are right beside me.

I grew up with you. I grew in love with you. 

I wish every day I could have grown old with you.

“Till we meet again, Let my heart rest content in this knowledge

I will love you, always and forever.”

R.

Author’s note :  I loved to write letters when I was younger. Even in this blog, I still get the random comment years later from people who loved the letter “To the Stranger I love”. I always wondered what would be a good reason to write a letter again . I finally figured I’d go for the exact opposite of the first post : where earlier, it was a letter from a guy to a girl he hasn’t met yet who he promises to love, I wanted this to be from a guy who has been touched by love and having lost it, fears he may never get it again.