The Gift of the Night Before

There are so many little things that are saving my soul right now. I can’t understand what has happened. I can’t wrap my head around the fact that Rene is gone. Just like that, gone. He has been there since I met him in grade eight. We were friends, then dated, broke up, fought, got back together, and planned a future. Through it all, even if we weren’t together, we were always together. Now I am without him? Amidst all this confusion I have been holding tightly to some of our sweetest moments. I had heard someone say the moments before everything changes are just regular moments. That is really the truth, life is life. For most of it we are in the groove. Even what seems to be ups and downs are more or less in the groove, until they are not. That is when everything stops and we can’t catch our breath, our minds can’t seem to process, and reality seems very confusing. I can feel myself tiptoeing around what I am able to take on and ignoring huge parts of my life for the time being. So I hang on to the precious moments before it all changed forever, and they really were the best.

I know there will be many lessons from this, but one that surfaced right away for me was the importance of time with the ones you love, quality time, real I see you and am all here with you kind of time.  Saturday Rene and I hung out in the afternoon, we got ready together, and we went to Mission Hill’s Concert series, our second of the summer. Rene was the balloon and I the anchor in our relationship. He was all about the doing, going, traveling, exploring, faster, more, bigger, let’s do it all. I would have been so lame without him, he nudged me to do so much.

We saw The Wallflowers, we had a snack, wine, and watched the sunset while we danced. This beautiful man by my side. Making sure they made me a vegan sandwich, laughing with me at the very tipsy happy lady in front of us, and introducing me to the who’s who of Kelowna.  The Wallflowers put on a great show, and the weather was perfect, making it easy for us to have a blast, and for that I am so grateful.

At the end of the concert Rene said to me “I feel like I just fell in love with you all over again.” Rene not known for his vulnerability gave me this gift. I will remember that evening and those words forever. Some of our friends joked that it was clear we weren’t married yet with how in love we seemed. Rene whispered in my ear, ‘we will be like this forever. ‘

We grabbed takeout and came home, sat by the fire, drank wine, chilled with our pup and it was perfect. We were in such a sweet place. In the morning we left together, he with his friends and me with our puppy. We had a real good-bye, again one of his buddies joked that we should be marrying each other with goodbyes like that.

I could not imagine what it would feel like if we would have been in a fight, or just the busyness of life. I love him for so much and I really love him for giving me that night.

This is not about living in fear of losing someone, it is about living more awake. It is about leaving behind the fears of not making enough, not being enough, not working enough, of not looking busy enough, and getting clear on what matters and making that a priority. Take your loved one out and have a night to remember. Put the phone down and look them in the eye, fall asleep cuddling not holding the Ipad, see them and soak it all up. Do your thing, work hard, but get clear on what matters and make sure they know, without a shadow of a doubt what they mean to you.

~ with love