Love to Heaven

    It was love at first sight, for me any way. Back then she didn’t even know I existed. I knew everything about her. I knew she loved shopping for shoes. I knew she loved the shopping part much more than any purchase she’d ever made. I knew her shopping was one of the few methods she had used to escape her pain. I knew who and what had caused the pain and I longed to hold her in my arms. I also knew that all the shopping in the world would never fill her barren heart.
    If only I could have convinced her that everything would be alright, that it would all work out in the end, but I was a stranger to her. I remember how painful it was to be so close to her that I could smell the sweetness of her skin. I always stayed close to her. I was normally two steps ahead of her warding off any dangers she may encounter. At the same time I was two steps behind, just in case she were to stumble. I would then be able to dive down and break the blow of her fall.
    I’ll never forget the day we were formally introduced. Her friend had brought her along to a retreat at Stella Niagara. I was also in attendance. I swear my heart skipped a beat when she walked in that main conference room. She was more stunning than she had ever been before. The best part was that we had spent the whole weekend together.
    We had done various activities to get to know one another better. I could tell she was beginning to warm up to me. Whenever my name was called aloud she would flash her dazzling smile. It seemed that whenever we talked, all the problems of the world around her would melt away. One thing was for sure, I knew that for once in her life, she wasn’t allowing her pain to loom over her.
    It wasn’t too long after that when we began seeing each other on a regular basis. Like I said, I had always been seeing her, only now she saw me too. I was desperate to reveal my life long secret admiration of her, but I knew that wouldn’t go over very well. She would become overwhelmed and flee from me, not to mention the embarrassment she would feel about what I had witnessed throughout her troubled life. I played it cool and allowed her to come to me, until that day.
    Nothing was more painful than the day she blamed me for the death of her father. Who else would she blame? I was the only one in the room when she walked in. Hot angry tears poured down her face and over her pink full lips as she shook her fist and cursed me out.
    How could this be happening? Our relationship had just began. I had already vowed to spend the rest of my life with her. My worst fear was to loose her and that reality began to unfold before my very eyes. As quickly as we had developed a relationship I was shutout, cut off and painstakingly avoided.
    Over the years I watched her self destruct. Her days of shoe shopping were replaced by trips to the liquor store. The pain and bitterness evolving with each passing day. She began to blame me for everything that went wrong in her life. It was my fault that she couldn’t stay in college. Studying interfered with her drinking schedule. It was me who drove her to drink in the first place. If I hadn’t taken her father’s life, she would have been just fine.
    What she couldn’t see was that I was always there for her. I had tried to save her father. I had stayed there to comfort her when she discovered her loss. She thought that she could run from me? Maybe enough liquor would erase me from her memory. Didn’t she realize that she was following the spirit of a dead man? The life style she had developed was the exact one that had led her father to his death.
    I may have lost him, but I wasn’t about to loose her. Call me persistent or even invasive if you will, but I never gave up. I gave her space and time, but I stayed close all the while. I began purposely leaving mementos of our short lived romance in places where I knew she’d be. I used her friend to relay messages to her. I even got creative and captured her attention through articles in magazines that I knew she was a subscriber to.
    I’ve got to admit, it was a tough shell to crack. Oddly enough it was the cold shoulder that hurt worse than being cursed out. At least when I was being cursed my existence was acknowledged. I patiently counted the years, months, weeks, and days that it took her to face me again.
    Unfortunately it was grief that had brought her back to me. Her health was failing and she was horrified. She was still fairly young and realizing that she hadn’t lived nearly long enough to have accomplished anything of true value. She had not allowed herself to love or be loved since that day. I was the only one that she had ever shared her love with and the only one she had to turn to in a time of such strife.    In my eyes, she was more beautiful than the day we first met. It was mostly because I knew that this time she was mine, forever.
She never did recover from her illness, but unlike her father, she died content, knowing that she would never be alone. We shared the last few months of her life together, reflecting on the past and reliving the early days of our budding romance. She was overcome with relief when I forgave her for all the times she had cursed me and the whole blaming me for everything bit.
    I was finally able to reveal how long I had actually been watching her and that I loved her long before she ever knew my name. I also explained how I was always with her father and how he never accepted me the way she had. It was that simple action of accepting me that led her to where she is today, in heaven.