I was looking for new music yesterday and I came across an album called “You Forgot It In People”. This title moved me in a way that I can’t explain. Something about the way the words read made me have one of those moments when too many things rush in to your mind at once to even have the slightest hope of deciphering what’s what. It all rushed in before I knew what was coming and my mind filled with images of broken hearts and bruised dreams and moments of laughter and singing and it just…locked down. I never started locking down until I lost Emily. She was beautiful and wondrous and held every thing descent in me right in the palm of her precious hand and held everything broken in me inside of her heart. She was completely accepting of me and all of my tarnished misgivings and that is…something. Something beautiful. Something wondrous. She was…… my god, she was Something. When I got the casual text from her explaining that she had been diagnosed with cancer, but not to worry and asked how I was (because this was her nature), I cried until I couldn’t breathe and then I kept crying.......................................................
Not her. Of all the people in this rotten world for her to be struck this way… This had to be a mistake. Check again and keep checking until you find something that shows you how beautiful she is and that you must have made a mistake…
There wasn’t a mistake and then a mere 8 months later this beautiful creature was gone. She has this voice… it was angelic. She had this smile… it too was angelic. She had this way of holding her hands just so that was…angelic. She had this heart…it was far beyond anything angelic had ever seen. I guess I should have seen it coming all along… Of all her angelic ways she was far too beautiful to be here, in this world, with all of us who are merely… people. Even the beautiful ones are not my Emily’s kind of angelic…
I thought of how many things I had “forgotten in people”. I forgot my ability to rely on others in two people – one died and one, while holding me up, still let’s me down. I forgot my heart in a boy who broke it. I forgot my devotion in a brother who ignores it. I forgot my differences in a family that scoffed them weak. I forgot my mind in a world that soiled it. I forgot my faith in God and he ruined it.
Of all the things that I have forgotten in people I still lose sight of things that move too far in. I forgot love in Emily and she never betrayed it. I don’t know how to remember after forgetting it in her. There isn’t another love like that for me and I don’t know how to remember. I don't even know how to want to remember. I think it will always be forgotten in my devastation of missing her.
She never did forget her faith in God and never wanted it back, even after she was sick. Even after she was sicker. She never forgot her ability to care because she cared about my silly life while she was sick like that. She never forgot her devotions to her family and her God. She never forgot anything in anyone and some how… She’s gone. I wish I could say I have the ability to carry her best parts on through the world, inside of me, but who am I kidding… I’m not angelic – I’m just human, if even that, and I forgot the best parts of me in her. I forgot my heart in her heart and my faith was broken in her illness.
There will never be something so beautiful to be forgotten so easily that can hurt this much… It never ends. This kind of pain never ends.
How did I become that person? That girl who forgot who she was in people? When did I become so weak that others were able to make me forget?
It’s a new year. In just a few short days it will have been a year since Emily…well…since she got to stop being sick. I miss her so much but I'm happier for her lack of illness than I am sad for my own selfishness.
This year is supposed to be full of change and excitement and challenge in my life. It’s supposed to be full of Chicago
