we keep this love in a photograph

Chapter 64

To my dearest Jennie,

If you're reading then then the only thing I can say is I'm sorry. I promised you I'd come home and I didn't intend for it to be in a box, but I broke that promise and I'm more sorry than you can ever imagine because I promised never to be the person in your life that causes you pain, and I don't think it's arrogant to say that you're hurting right now. It's something I'll never be able to forgive myself for.

As I'm writing this, you're asleep in my bed at my mom's house, curled up right next to me where you belong. You don't know it yet but I'm going to propose in a couple of days and I hope that you say yes. If you said yes and you're reading this then I'm sorry for breaking another promise to you. And, well, if you said no, I hope you know that I died so in love with you that you were the only person I wanted to spend my life with. Perhaps it's selfish of me to ask you anyway when you might end up reading this, but I want you to know how much I love you while I can still tell you, and that I have a whole future planned for us. Right now, as I sit here, I want to do everything with you, so I'm sorry if there comes a point where you're reading these words.

I know love isn't supposed to hurt and it's been painful enough as it is for us, but I can't bring myself to regret even a second of our time together, even if it leads up to you reading this. How could I? And maybe that' selfish of me to come into your life and shake everything up and leave in the cruelest way possible, after making you love me, but I want you to know that I loved you too, utterly and completely, with my entire heart. I hope you felt that and know that I'll always feel that way about you.

I know it's probably stupid to say this but I don't want you to be sad forever, Jen. I wish I could be the person you'd live a long and happy life with, but I'm not, and I hope that one day you'll be able to find it within yourself to open up to someone new. I know it's asking a lot because I know how hard it was for you to trust me too, but please, for me. I don't want you to give up on how far you've come and I don't want to be the roadblock in your life for how far you still have to go. If there's anything I've learnt from my parents dying it's that it's okay to be sad for a little while, but then you need to heal. So please, heal for me when you're ready, and give all of that love inside you to someone who deserves it and who loves you as much as I do.

I know this will be the most challenging thing in your long life of challenges yet, but I know how strong you are and I know that with time the pain will get smaller and your life will grow around the hole I left behind. I'm glad we have all of those photographs together to remind you of our time together though, and I hope that one day you can look back on them - maybe with your kids and your new partner - and remember just how much we loved each other. Maybe it'll still hurt a little, but I guess deep down I knew that I was taking them just in case something like this happened, and I hope that you'll be able to find peace in them one day and think of me fondly. Just know that each time you think of me, I'll be thinking of you too, and inside these pages our love will stay frozen exactly as it is now, where I'm right there with you, never letting go.

Even now, maybe this isn't the end of it all. You're a scientific person but I know you don't believe in soulmates and fate and all of that crap, but you believe in science. You know the quantum theory of entanglement, where particles become correlated with each other regardless of distance. I like to think that coincides with the first law of thermodynamics – that no energy is created and none is destroyed. At the beginning of the universe maybe the particles that made us up were separated, and over time, no matter what form our energy takes, they keep coming back to each other. Maybe that's what soulmates really are. And if that's what they are, then I'll come back to you, over and over again, in every lifetime.

You think it was by some miracle that we met that day, but I never told you the truth. Every day that week I'd gone to that coffee shop and ordered the smallest, cheapest coffee I could get and sat in that shop. I'd just come home from overseas and gotten back from seeing Clare and I was having a hard time adjusting. I was there again the day you came in and I saw you from across the room. I'd never seen someone so beautiful before, I knew I had to take your photo. and it was so busy in there that I gave up my table to someone else and asked if I could sit with you and you said yes and let me take your photo. So you see, I think I went there every day knowing you would turn up eventually, and even if we weren't able to spend a lifetime together, we were meant to be together for as long as we've had.

I'm not sure what the circumstances of my death might be - maybe it was a freak accident, or maybe it was something and violent - but I want you to know that you'll be my last thought, and I won't be afraid. Life isn't about the final moments, it's about the moments that lead up to them, and so many of those moments are full of you. Just know that loving you was the easiest thing I have ever done in my life, and if love was enough I'd still be there with you.

Now it's time for me to wait for you to come home, because I believe that in some way (I'm not sure which) we'll be together again some day. I'll wait for you, for as long as it takes, because I'll love you forever, Jennie Kim.

Yours always,
Rosie