Maria and I had been looking through old, worn out boxes that we had long since forgotten about. I slid the next one in between where we sat on the floor of our bedroom, and slowly unfolded the soft, worn out flaps that held the box shut. Maria and I both leaned forward slightly and peered into the hidden memories this box held, and we started pulling items out one by one. The first item was an old CD that we had burned together from each of our music collections; it had been our playlist.
I creaked to my feet and slipped the CD into the old CD player we had, and pressed Play. Our playlist filled the room as we continued to look though the box, our music played as we rediscovered memory after memory. “I Got You, Babe” by Cher played as we found our various birthday and Christmas gifts we'd given each other over the years, “How Far We've Come” by Matchbox Twenty played as we found the first Valentines Day cards we'd given each other, “How to Save a Life” by The Fray hummed in our ears as we looked at the postcards I had sent Maria from a week when I'd been in Massachusetts for a wedding, and Maria had had to stay home because she'd had the flu. “You Can Sleep While I Drive” by Melissa Etheridge played as Maria unburied a picture a friend had taken of Maria and I kissing on the steps of the first house we'd bought together. Maria and I smiled as the two songs we'd always listened to as a pair played, “Holly (Would You Turn Me On?)” and “Dear Maria, Count Me In” both by All Time Low. “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs” by Fall Out Boy made us laugh softly, looking at each other over the box that lay between us. “I'm Yours” by Jason Mraz, “Check Yes Juliet” and “All Again For You” by We The Kings all made me feel the rush of just starting out my life with Maria all over again. Maria and I murmured a few lines to a few songs together, and we cried.
“You're gonna miss this, you're gonna want this back, you're gonna wish these days hadn't gone by so fast... these are some good times, so take a good look around, you may not know it now, but you're gonna miss this. Before she knows it, she's a brand new bride...” “I do remember the swing in your step, the life of the party, you're showing off again, and I roll my eyes and then you pull me in. I'm not much for dancing, but for you I did.” “Anything to make you smile, you are the ever-living ghost of what once was. I never want to hear you say, that you'd be better off or you liked it that way. But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do, no one's gonna love you more than I do. But someone, they should have warned you, when things start splitting at the seams and now, the whole thing's tumbling down. Things start splitting at the seams and now, if things start splitting at the seams and now, it's tumbling down, hard. But no one is ever gonna love you more than I do, no one's gonna love you more than I do...” (You're Gonna Miss This, Trace Adkins; Lat Kiss, Taylor Swift; No One's Gonna Love You, the Band of Horses).
Old letters, old photographs, old presents and gift wrap we'd saved. Maria had even saved the shirt she had worn to bed every night when I was away. More tears and smiles poured from us when we found the pair of identical necklaces that had
Mrs. and Mrs.
de Kali
engraved on the back. We both slipped them on over our heads, where they hung just above our hearts.
YOU ARE READING
Dear Maria (on hold)
RomantizmHolly and Maria, now in their late sixties, have now been a couple very much in love for about 40 years. Life as it once was grinds to an abrupt halt when Maria is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Holly starts to write down their life together, how t...
