Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. – Mary Schmich
Sitting underneath a basket of baby clothes I can’t bare to part with is a ruby red box, flat and rectangular.
Inside are the papers that track a relationship from its infancy.
And infants we were,
Just eighteen and nineteen when we first met.
The box contains lined paper and blue pen detailing starry nights and lofty plans of eternal love.
Some are epic and some a mere line scribbled on a takeaway napkin. Signed with a kiss.
Over the years the number of letters received diminished.
But feel no emotion of pity or sadness for me.
As with age you come to learn that things given with less frequency grow large with importance and value.
But,
It’s hard to look at the box now.
Not because I am any less in love.
But because I know there is one letter that remains unopened.
The box reminds me of that which is lost. Never to be read.
The one regret of my wedding day.
A day that was otherwise a heady experience of whirling ivory, smiling faces and balloons that fell like soft sugared almonds as we ran through the doors and into the lives of Mr and Mrs something.
He’d purchased a gift, a print called The beloved.
Rossetti’s muse depicts ideal love, beauty, sexuality, virtue.
And the power that women hold over men.
But in the rush of the reveal the host ripped at the wrapping, holding the framed gift high in the air as underlings whisked the rubbish away.
Days later we realised it wasn’t all rubbish.
Squashed and compacted within the gilt paper was a card.
The truest gift from husband to bride.
A love letter more special than most.
Gone forever.