Love lost
They met in a restaurant bar on a beach in Bretagne.
She was a waitress and he was the new chef. He was a talented passionate chef, in love with food, always cooking and spoiling our stomachs with incredible meals. He believed the best way to show love is to cook. She was not single at that time, but he didn’t care. She will later remember him telling the story of how he said to his sister: this girl I met, I will not let her get away. And he didn’t, until he did. He loved her and she loved him. You could see it when they were together. They got married and their wedding lasted 5 days, more than in the fairytales. They were together for 7 years. They were going to open a restaurant, the wheels were already in motion, they even had a name for it. She had just found out that she was finally pregnant, after years of trying and failing and painful IVF procedures. Then he died one day in January 2022. He was 43 and she was 33. He had made reservations at a restaurant that evening, to mark their last evening before embarking on the new adventure, a new life, a new beginning, a new city. She didn’t want to go, she was not in the mood. They fought about it, they made up and she let him go alone, as he wanted; he didn’t want to cancel. He was sitting alone at his table in the restaurant, enjoying his beefsteak, when it happened. He choked on a piece of meat that went in the wrong way, he ran out of air and then he had a heart attack and died. They tried to bring him back to life for almost an hour with no luck. He had run out of luck. And so did she, or did she?
I have known them in the last 3 years of their relationship. I have been to their wedding, but I hardly knew them at that time. In time, getting to know them, I found myself liking her despite she loving him so obvious and so much. I couldn’t understand it, but it is not for me to understand. Love is the life and rules two people make together, the compromises each finds acceptable to live with, and it is a love only truly known by them. I thought she was making too many compromises and he was making none. He loved her almost more than anything in this world. This is how I saw it, I always saw that “almost” there. He was good company, but not an easy person to be in love with, with faults and troubles not many can take in. But she did, even if to me, he could have done more, he could have tried harder, he could have changed things and maybe had an easier, healthier life, with a heart that would not have gotten tired so fast.
She buried him in his hometown in Bretagne, close to his family, as he wished, not far from the beach where they had met. She was strong, stronger than I could ever imagine, and I know what it feels like to have someone you love taken away from you in a hard, sudden and unfair way. But then again, the loss of a parent is easier to accept than the loss of your love. In a corner of your mind you know the day will come when your parents will be gone, but you hope the one you love to accompany you close to the end of your journey in life.
Catholic funerals are different from the orthodox ones. Or this is how I see them, being born and raised orthodox without having the choice, like most of us. I find them easier to take in, more human, more personal, with feeling and they can touch you even if you feel no personal loss for the one who is gone. She held a speech in the church, describing him as her heart had known him, with little anecdotes and words of generosity. His father and his brother sang together in church for him. It is the voice of his father and the guitar of his brother that brought the tears into my eyes and I was surprised, because I didn’t see myself crying at his funeral. They impressed me more than her words, however touching and powerful they were. I am thinking that they moved me because I can understand the love, pain and loss a father and brother will feel, but I could not accept hers. I remember her talking to us about the beach where he first kissed her, or more like forcefully dragged her into their first kiss, the only beach in Bretagne where you can see the sunset every day of the year. She was still talking about him in present tense and only if you lost someone so savagely sudden you understand how your brain still refuses to accept, even if you go through the motions and do the every day life. I remember her saying he is the man of her life. And this where I found myself not able to accept that in my mind. Because I wish for her to find the man of her life. I know she loved him more than anything and I wish for her to remember him with love all her life: as the father of her child, who she sees in her child every day, as a beautiful chapter in her life, but not as the man of her life. I believe that she deserves more and not just another love. A “more” she cannot fathom right now, she does not want, she cannot believe it exists or that is possible for her. I wish for her to meet the love of her life, a man who will love her more than anything in this world.
Ani de cuvinte 