Without End (Love)

They say you never forget your first love.  Well, for most people, "never" is a lot shorter than for it is for me.  After 160 years to forget, though, I can say that idiom is really holding up.

I never planned to love anyone.  At the point I first fell in love, I already knew what I was, what fate was set out for me.  My parents were already gone, so there was no pressure from them.  I had no reason to put myself out there for anyone, so I didn't.  I worked odd jobs, whatever someone would hire an unwed woman to do, and it was working one of those jobs at a general store that I met him.

At first, he was just another customer, but what made him different was that he noticed me, even though I was trying my hardest to blend into the background.  And yet in noticing me, he wasn't crude or domineering like most men of that era had been towards me.  He was kind.  Concerned even.  Like he was curious to know who I was and what I was doing here.  And for some unknown reason, I decided to open up and tell him what little bits I could.

When we got married, he still didn't know the full truth.  In the back of my head, that was a problem, a big problem.  He was going to want children, even though we hadn't talked about it, that was just expected in that day, and I wasn't sure I could go through with that knowing I was then going to have to watch them die.  I knew I was going to have to watch him die one day, too, but I was trying my hardest not to think about that at all, not to think about anything except how much I loved him and wanted to spend what time I could with him.

In the end, I realized how selfish I had been.  It wasn't just I who was going to lose him.  He was going to lose me, too, and in an even worse way.  I wouldn't be able to grow old with him.  I wouldn't be able to properly see his life through to its end.  That wasn't fair to him.  If I really loved him, I would have never married him to begin with, I realized.

So when the inevitable war rolled around, I saw my opportunity to go off to serve as a nurse and never come back.

My love, being the kind and generous man he was, signed up to fight for the union as well.  We were together at first, but then battles and the wounded brought us apart.  I still remember the last kiss we ever shared the night before he was ordered to go fight in a battle so far away.  Part of me feared he would die in that battle, while another part almost, cruelly, though perhaps it would be better if he did die.  That way, I wouldn't have to break his heart.

But from all I heard, he lived.  So I had to do my duty, and when the war was ended, he was greeted with a letter from me instead of with the warmth of my presence.  I wrote to him about how much I loved him but that there were secrets I had kept that doomed our relationship.  I still did not tell him what those secrets were.  As much as I did love and trust him, I was afraid.  I would afraid he would try to tell me it didn't matter, that he still wanted to be with me.  I was afraid I would believe him.

So I left his life, leaving him to suffer for a while, and hoping he could find love again in a way I knew I never could.

And eventually he did.  At least, he got married again.  I saw the announcement in a paper in they looked happy.  Later I found a story about one of their children.  And then later still, much later, I read the obituary announcing that he had died.

Going to the funeral was even harder than writing the letter that told him good-bye.  Even after I wrote that letter and left his life forever, part of me wondered if "forever" could possibly be shorter than I planned.  But as I watched his casket lowered into the ground, I knew that "forever" was really going to be forever.  I saw his widow and their grown children and grandchildren and even a couple of great-grandchildren.  He had had a long and loved life, it seemed, and now he was at peace, and his family at least had that comfort and the hope that they might see him again in heaven.

I had no such comfort.  I knew that heaven and hell were not for me.  I would never die.  I would never be returned to the ground.  I would never have the hope of seeing those I loved who had passed before again.  Until the earth burned out, I would walk it, and I would be alone.  I would never forget my first love and for me, never meant forever.