Hidden treasure
As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently had to wipe my computer and start over again. I’m still cleaning up that mess, slowly adding software back to my computer and reinstating files from the back-up hard drive as I find I need them.
A frantic e-mail from a dear friend, also a widow, who had just lost an important recording, exhorted me to back up immediately anything I had outstanding that was not yet backed up. I had all my e-mails from A on my computer, downloaded via Outlook, and they were lost in the purge, but as they were stored on web mail, I still had them. I knew I needed to back them up, but hadn’t yet gotten around to it. I got around to it late Saturday night, and all of Sunday. I would be sick if I lost them.
There was a grand total of 8,719 individual e-mails between us, in just over 2 years. I could hardly believe it. As I worked through the downloading process, some of them would catch my eye, and I’d open them and read them, and I’m glad I did. I found several pictures he had sent me that I didn’t have in my permanent collection and had forgotten he’d ever given to me. It’s an amazing gift to get “new” pictures of someone who is no longer here to be photographed. I was delighted, and I realized that I may find more treasures when I have reread all the e-mails. I don’t know when that will be; it’s on my “some day” list. I have to make them last the rest of my life, after all.
But the best gift I got from rereading those e-mails was the realization that I HAD told him how much I loved him, how much he meant to me, and how much better my life was for having met him. Like all bereaved folks, I beat myself up after for not having done enough, been enough, shown enough love while he was here. But I think that maybe I did, and frequently, too. I told him over and over, in short notes, and haikus and limericks, and long, gushy love letters. He could not have missed the fact that I loved him truly and deeply. I would’ve told him more often, if I had it to do over again. But I don’t think I was remiss in telling him over all. There’s a lot of peace in that for me; I could let myself off the hook on that score.
As I wrote to him in my journal last night, I let him know that I was kind of disappointed he’d not come back to me in honor of the Easter holiday, because that’s the whole point of it. I have no qualms about joshing the dead, especially this one. But I think, in a way, he did.