by Constance Jaquay

Love Is & Will Always Be 

In times when systems fracture, and values feel unstable, Love rises to be the only organic matter that can’t be tainted.  

1.

On the deathbed of her mother, she sits. In over forty years, it’s the first time they’ve held hands. They cling to one another as though their bodies can reverse time. 

He holds her face in the palm of his hands. He lifts her head towards him and whispers in her ear: I love you forever. Her left hand covers his right hand  // she replies, pressing her face deeper into his palm. 

2. 

In between uterine contractions and cervical dilations, she pushes life from her body. Her mind traces and tracks what it took to get to this moment. She remembers the first time she met her husband. How young/bold they were. She’d never imagine thirteen years would go by_together. A nurse hands her a crying baby; as she holds her little girl in her arms, her heart morphs // she begins to realize, as her mother was, that she is now a mother too. 

3. 

It felt as though she’d been crying for years. Weeks turned into months, and it seems she has only just begun to find her rhythm again. He was her first gift. They had grown up together. In many ways, it felt as though her dog Dingus was her soul manifested as an animal. For months, he seemed to have stopped playing, as though he was living only to survive. It was time she realized she must let him go. That his pain wasnot her pain, and it wasn’t fair to keep him alive. She felt as though shed been kicked in the gut over and over again. She never imagined she would be burying her first baby. 

As life does, it reminds us of the fragility of what it means to be human. 

In moments of passing and in moments of new life, in holding on and in letting go, one thing remains untouched:

Death comes for us all. What lingers and sticks is what the heart held. What endures is that we dared to love, long after one is gone.

Love Is & Will Always Be