[[OLD]] A Handful of Daffodils (Forgotten Series, #7)

Chapter Seventy-Four

Two weeks later

I had finished packing the house.

My entire life with Chrissie had been packed into boxes and then I had started to go through it, giving away what I knew I couldn't take and what I couldn't use. It had been...it had been hard. I felt torn down the middle and raw around the edges. I had cried more during the last few weeks than I had ever before. Everything had memories of Chrissie attached. To hold it and pack it away or to hold it and pass it on to another person was hard.

It was harder when I would run across something and I would remember the moments with Chrissie and then I realized there were moments with Menza as well. An object with the memories of two females attached to it, two lives. One I had lived and lost and the other that had a tentative start but I ruined. Those ones hurt the most. It hurt to acknowledge the life I had ruined, the delicate start that could have been that I destroyed in the anger I had cloaked myself in to hide from the fear of what I was feeling.

I had laughed with Menza, smiled with her, ate dinners, had conversations, had grown closer to her, protected her, and...and I had started to fall in love all over again.

That thought hurt. It did. It was what scared me because those feelings had rose up inside of me and I had been reminded of Chrissie and I felt like I was breaking her trust, breaking her heart. I felt like there was a line I was crossing and then that night had happened and I crossed it. So I got mad, I got angry, I got furious because it was easier than facing the truth of everything that was happening.

That I had been starting to move on.

The laughing and the conversations and the beginnings of love that I had been experiencing had been definitive proof that I had been moving on from Chrissie's passing. That I was letting go and moving forward. So I had pulled myself in the other direction, into anger, because it was easier to bear than the truth that I was scared of replacing my sunshine.

It had been a realization I had been fighting but it still crept in in the low moments. A part of me felt guilty and horrible, like Mike had said  I felt like the lowest sort of male, moving on from my mate now that she was gone. It made me feel like William, stepping outside of the bounds of my claiming. However something else Mike said had started to echo inside me as well.

That maybe Menza was brought into my life for a reason, that perhaps Chrissie, in her love for me, had asked Mene to help me and I had been given Menza. I had pushed it away at first but the longer I spent packing everything up, the more I thought about it. Chrissie would have liked Menza, I knew she would have. I knew Menza had been highly isolated before she came under my roof, no one had really interacted with her but I knew that if she had met Chrissie, that Chrissie would have really liked her. It wasn't so far fetched to think that when Chrissie reached Mene, that as she watched over Maeve and I from the mother goddess's arms, that she didn't also see Menza and ask Mene to help.

It made sense in a strange cosmic way. I could never truly replace Chrissie. I loved her with my everything and my all and I never would have abided by someone trying to step into that role but Menza never did that. Menza stood beside where Chrissie had. She guided me, making sure Chrissie was right there with us. Even with her gone now, she had taken a photo album with her, the one with pictures of Chrissie and I, more than likely for Maeve. To remind her of her mum and her dad. Menza would have never stepped into that role but I had slowly realized she never needed to.

Moving on, letting go, didn't mean erasing, it meant making the decision to live life and remember those you love fondly. It didn't mean replacing, it meant making the decision to ensure they were with you and loving in spite of the loss. It was making the choice to live your life, not ignoring the pain but welcoming and acknowledging that there would be a time when it didn't hurt so much, that you could laugh with the pain, could smile through it, that you could breath inside of it.