February 13, 2020

          After tidying every inch of our home, it was time to go through Isaac’s personal things. In all of the years that we shared the same space, I had never touched his closet, looked through his phone, or opened his wallet. Even after his death, I wanted to still respect his privacy, yet on the other hand, his possessions were now in my sole possession. After taking inventory of what he held dear, I noticed not what was there but what wasn’t. He had no random receipts, no useless items, no junk. Every single thing that he held onto had meaning. Looking at his collection of sentimental items was proof that he had lived and by the fact that I was looking at them, proof that he was gone. I wasn’t ready to make a decision about what stayed and what went, and so I didn’t.

         As I turned around to start tidying my special things, I found the one item of Isaac’s that was out of place, the one possession of his that was oddly among mine. It was a piece of paper from before we met with a list of songs written in pencil, in Isaac’s handwriting. At first, I dismissed it as having no purpose in catching my attention, until it transported me back in time to a memory from the infancy of our relationship and melted my heart. (See the facebook post below)

          Like many couples, our relationship had two distinct timelines, before and after becoming parents. Since Isaac’s passing, the last eight years of navigating parenthood together played over and over in my mind, while I took inventory of what happened and what didn’t. They were the years that had the full spectrum of intense uncomfortable emotions, the years that challenged us the most as a couple and the years that transformed us into mature adults. They were the years that I held so dear that I almost forgot about the time before we were called mom and dad.

         And like most parents, memories of our children’s childhood bring their own mix of emotions. Mothers reminisce about the times they held their child as a baby and fathers relive the precious moments of toddlerhood, both with a longing for a time that can never be lived again. As those memories replay in our hearts, there is a layer of sadness for what can never again be physically held.  So we hang onto those memories, facing their sadness to experience their joy, like sentimental possessions we tuck away into our closet. 

           During the early years of our parenthood and the sleep deprivation that followed, our ability to temper our frustration with caring for each other became more of a challenge and our quarrels started to increase in frequency and intensity. Alarmed by the conflict, we decided to give couples counselling a whirl. As we sat there in our first appointment, I watched the stranger we invited into our relationship do her job. She started by asking, “How did you two meet?”, and I instantly felt my defences melt while I told her our story. She knew what she was doing. She was bringing us back to the beginning, to where our love started, before our focus turned towards loving our child. To the time before the honeymoon was over. When we felt nothing but pure love. 

       After Isaac passed, it was almost impossible to look back and remember how my earliest memories of us being together felt. In an attempt to protect me from the pain of separation, my brain prevented me from feeling any emotion and with it took my ability to feel connection. I was numb. For the next few months I had to look at photos to remember what Isaac looked like and watch videos to remember the sound of his voice. The shock began to lighten around the time I started to tidy all of our things, and the memories started to gradually fade back in. My brain had decided it was safe to let down its defences and emotions now accompanied the flashbacks.

          Like the core memories in the movie “Inside Out”, I felt like every memory I held of Isaac had now been touched by sadness. Each one was now viewed through the lens of knowing when it would all come to an end and every moment we shared together, going back to the time we met, was now coloured by grief. However, each memory also held a version of Isaac that could no longer be physically held. As I recognized this familiar type of sadness, I realized that perhaps the sadness that was infused into every memory didn’t come from the fact that his body had died, but because time had passed. I now could see that this was a sadness that I was always meant to have, even if his body was still here. Whether Isaac was alive today or not, the memories of our past were proof that our love existed, not proof that he was gone. 

          Nostalgia will always evoke a longing to go back to simpler times and if Isaac was sitting right next to me now, I would still reminisce on our past, with a yearning for a time when we were younger and our love was new. It doesn’t matter how much time we had to nurture our love into the future, the length of the infant stage of our relationship will always be the same… a time in our lives that had been long gone but its effects coloured every moment after. I just couldn’t see it yet.

          When I discovered the moment that Isaac’s little piece of paper brought me to, my defences came down and I was then able to see what I was unable to see all these years… every core memory going forward from that time on was coloured with our love. The answer to all of my memories turning blue was to also see the love that each one held and continue to hold them dear, like a sentimental possession, and tuck them away in the closet of my heart.

       I didn’t want to let the timing of Isaac’s passing steal the joy that our love brought to our lives… and so I didn’t.