I Will Live in You - 1. I Will Live in You

“Have you been happy?”

I felt the answer immediately. “If I hadn’t been, wouldn’t you have known?” It had been years since we had used words to communicate. But I could sense the slipping, the gentle pulling away that made them necessary now, even if I felt them rather than heard them.

I saw the smile on his lips. It matched mine. “Yes, we would have known.” I honored the bond that still existed. Honored it as I clung to it.

“There has never been one moment of regret.”

It felt like my thought, but I knew it came from him. I knew, also, that the words—words that were necessary—belonged to both of us.

“You have to let go. I can’t take you with me. I won’t take you with me.”

Three sentences. Pleading, sorrow and desperation formed the sequence. Love cradled every word, every syllable, every letter. It cradled me.

“I don’t want to let go.”

I tried to spread myself, to make myself stretch to fill the gaps that were already starting to form. How could I let go of him? He was everything. I was part of him. He was part of me. We were us. Forty five years had bound us together. Surely they had made us inseparable. Surely I could not exist without him. Surely I did not want to exist without him.

“We knew this time would come. We accepted it.”

Were they his words? Or mine? Were they still our words?

Yes, we had accepted it, as all lovers accept that eventually there will be an end. “…to love and to cherish, from this day forward until death do us part.” Weren’t those the customary words? “…to cherish you for as long as we both shall live.” Variations on a theme. There were endless variations, all saying the same thing. “…as long as we both shall live.” I had not said those words. I had not wrapped up our time together and placed it in a box with limitations, but we had both understood their existence. There will be an end. One of us will die and there will be an end.

I spread myself even more, felt myself thin to the point of transparency.

“I will live in you.”

Had I said those words…to him? Then? I had. I had caressed him with those words, filled him with myself and promised him that nebulous concept of “forever.” And now…was he saying those words to me? Had we come full circle? Was he telling me he would live on in me, even after his death? Or were they still our words? Remembered and shared, shared as we had shared everything from that first moment?

They were his words. I felt them slipping over his lips, lips that moved while mine did not.

I spread myself even more, too thin, now, to hold together; and I felt myself breaking apart.

I had not looked into his eyes since that very first moment. They were blue eyes, though “blue” could not adequately describe them, no more than “pain” could adequately describe what I felt as I looked into them this time, for the last time.

“Don’t leave me.”

Though it was I who had left him. I knew this as I looked down at him, as I saw his eyes empty. I had left him before he could leave me. Because that was how it had to be, how we had both always known it would have to be.

He was dead. All that he had been was no more. All that we had been…that was not “no more.” I could still feel him, bits of him remained within the broken pieces of myself.

Had I tears, I would have wept them until there was nothing but tears in the universe.

It should not be so difficult. Not after so many times. How many times had there been? How many hosts had I bonded with over the span of my existence? More than the concept of “numbers” could contain. Yet the separation was never anything short of agony.

And the joining was never anything short of ecstasy.

Were it not for that, for the beginning that necessarily followed the ending, then I would have remained, would not have left my host, would have let him carry me with him into that endless sleep of death.

I caressed him once more, brushing over his body with all that I was.

But I could already feel him—he who waited, he who longed.

And I went to him, allowed myself to be carried by the wind that swirled around him. It was a cold wind, filled with small crystals of ice. I wrapped myself around those crystals, clung to them as they sliced into his skin, offering me an entry into his body. His eyes were open wide and I saw into them, through the black that was as dark and as deep as a starless night, and into his soul.

The bits and pieces of countless beings who had been part of me and whom I had been part of and who were now everything I had become cried out as one as we became part of that soul.

“I will live in you.”

Discuss this story here