The holidays are over. And I am glad. I didn't want the year to end. I hold on to things and I wanted to hold on to 2013 forever because Michael would never live to see another year. I still have all of our cards, letters, pictures, and keepsakes from when we dated in 2000. I started the "Caroline and Michael" box back then from a Timberland Boot box (which I still have the boots) that Michael bought me. The box is so old that the glue holding it together doesn't even stick.
My favorite thing about this old box is the quote I have taped in the left corner. It says "True love endures; if it does not, then it was never true" We were just a couple of young kids in love and I was young and wasn't ready to get married and Michael was. With a ring almost identical to the one I have now (except as Michael said "alot smaller because I was alot broker"), that I never even knew about at the time. I had college and he had a job. And we were at different places in our lives. Separated by time and circumstance. And then I got the call, "Are you sitting down? Michael is going to be a daddy". And I knew as soon as those words came out of his friend's mouth, what was coming next. I didn't have to hear another word or ask another question. But I asked "When?" And the response I got back was, "In a few weeks." I knew he would do the right thing and get married. Michael told me, "Caroline, I want to try to give my child what I didn't have growing up." Time and Circumstance ultimately separated us. There is a Kenny Chesney song "A lot of things Different" that came out around the time all of this happened. But now it hits so much harder. "People say they wouldn't change a thing, even if they could. Oh, but I would. Oh I, I'd do a lot of things different." I would have changed my life if I would have known then what I know now. I would have never left him behind. But the thing about life is you can't go back and change things. And as crazy as life was for me and him...we just accepted that we were just not meant to be together. It wasn't meant to be. This was the path WE had chosen and we respected our choices even though it meant we were not together.
Fast forward 10 years and we get a second chance at a once in a lifetime love. God had given us a 2nd chance. He told me after we were back together that his child saved his life. He said he was in such a bad place from us not being together, that his child saved his life. That was God's way of making him a man in his eyes. He said "I would have ended up in jail or dead the rate I was going." I don't know why things in life happen the way they do. Is it fate or do we control our own destiny? I never believed in fate until Michael and I started dating again. I knew it was God's work to bring us back together. I believe that with my whole heart and anyone that knew either of us would tell you the same thing. God blessed me with this man. He blessed me with a man that told me when I broke up with him "Nobody will ever love you like I do." And he meant that. And he spent every chance he could trying to prove it to me.
So while I still am in denial about the man of my dreams dying... I choose not to talk about all the pain I feel everyday. Everyone knows I'm in pain. Anyone that was ever around the two of us could tell you about the kind of love we had. It was pure and strong and almost out of a movie. The movie "The Notebook" was one of our favorite movies...because we believed in love. We believed in 2nd chances and we believed in each other. I just want to remember the kind of love we had and never forget his love for me. I was reading through some of the cards he had given me in the past year and just wanted to share.
Our first Valentine's Day as Husband and Wife
On the day we got married
On our First Anniversary
He is gone and I miss him more than anyone could try to imagine. But he ALWAYS made sure I knew how much he loved me. I smile through my tears because I had the opportunity to have my heart complete at one time. Now, It is shattered into a million pieces that I don't know how to put back together, but I smile knowing Michael died a happy man. He was in love, he loved his family, and he was proud of the things he had accomplished.
So yes, I am in denial that this man has been taken from me. "De-nile is not just a river in Egypt"
