The Timeline of Love

Saturday, October 10th - 1:47PM

"When I think of time, I can't think of anything that's similar to it. The funny thing about it is that it's neither defined nor undefined. It is always constant, but at the same time there are milestones where it seems to speed up and low points where everything seems to completely stop. It's something that you get to experience with people that you hold close to your heart, because the spark can only burn for so long before the flame dies, and thats what truly makes you appreciate the small moments. But now I'm just rambling. Back to the funny thing about it; the funny thing about it is that this thing that we always call short is actually the longest thing we'll ever get to experience. Funny right?"

No one in the room laughed.

A nervous laughter escaped my lips, making it quite obvious that I wasn't comfortable having to read my pre written eulogy. After the countless hours I had spent writing and then rewriting and then erasing and then crumpling and throwing and then writing on a clean page and then repeating that process, I'd gone through an entire note book. My brows had creased as my mouth had slightly opened ajar, and then I realized that there were no pages left in this small hand sized note book, and only two cardboard flaps that were intended to be the front and back to protect the pages inside. Except now I was left with two sad little cardboard rectangles, connected with this twirly piece of wire that wound through them. At first my mind went still, and then time was one of those low points where everything seems to completely stop. When time picked up and everything was back up to speed, I looked down from my current position in the tree house that B had built for me, and saw all the crumpled pages littering my backyard. Some I had managed to throw pretty far, but others remained in large piles directly under the tree. From this height, you couldn't see all the folds and creases in the crumpled pages and they all kind of blended together and looked like snow. Because it was nearly mid October, the air was fairly chilly outside, and the thought of snow made me even more cold. After pulling the sleeves of my sweater over my hands, I picked up my pen and messily began to scrawl my eulogy to A and B. I didn't think about what I was writing, and only translated the thoughts in my mind to the words on the cardboard flap. After writing five or six sentences, I read them over to see how it sounded and laughed a little to my self.

Life is short.

I picked up my pen again and wrote one last sentence. This sentence had been in the back of my mind ever since I got the news of their recent deaths. This sentence hadn't just been a translation from my mind to the cardboard, no, this sentence had been written and then rewritten and then erased and then crumpled and thrown and then written on a clean page over and over again. This was the sentence that scattered my backyard in the form of little white crumpled balls that looked like snow piles from all the way up here.

Standing at the podium, I looked in the crowd at all the unfamiliar faces. I looked down at my two pieces of cardboard that were attached by the twirly piece of metal and spoke the words that my pen had written countless times.

"If love could have saved you, you would have lived forever."

And it was true.