If there is a heaven

Lately I've found myself missing friends and lovers I no longer have in my life.

I'm still here, in this house, in this town. I still do the same work I've been doing for more than 30 years. People I used to think of my best friends no longer live here or no longer live at all. I don't know what force pulled them or me out of each other's lives.

I find myself passing a house I spent evenings in and I remember the food and the wine and the conversation and the feeling of "then." And I miss it. I can feel it like it was last night and yet I know, I am not the same person I was then. I've grown old, older, and so have they and they too are not who they were. Maybe they are no longer a couple as I am no longer a couple with the husband I was married to then.

And all those times I stepped away from my life and into relationships that while considered to be wrong, moved me so much - taught me so much. The memories of being present with that connection, however brief, but intense. A drunken kiss. An admission of caring, of longing. Was it really me back then? And what of the feelings and memories of those I connected with? Am I a memory to them as they are to me? I don't want to go back, I just want to remember, with someone who was there with me.

Perhaps that's the real pain we feel. That we are each of us alone to ponder what was.

I miss you too. I miss all of you.

I wish there was a day when we could each list out all the people we'd love to reconnect with or meet for the first time - and like speed dating we'd move through them catching up or coming together but only for a limited time - and then at the end of the day if each checked each other's name on the card - you'd get more time to remember together. If there is a heaven - I hope that's what's waiting for me. The chance to go back and reconnect. The chance to say that how I felt was real and honest and I don't regret a thing, except how it ended.

How did they all end? I'd love to know what I don't know.

If I could start my life over, I would make sure each person who touched my heart knew.