I Forget Where We Were...

"Hello love,

For you, I have so many words...

But, I forget where we were."

 -Ben Howard, I Forget Where We Were

Chris, Trey and Flynn,

 For you, I have so many words.

But I forget where we were...

A song has never more captivated me in the sheer instance that this particular song has. I love dissecting words...I always have. But what was so magical, to me personally, was how deeply I felt this song without truly hearing or understanding the words, at first. 

I love to be able to sing along to the songs I most love, at the very least, and to find the deeper meaning within them, for me. Especially when going through things in which only music seems to make any sense, can provide relief and catharsis and speak to the soul when no normal set of words someone could say, or even something I could think of possibly ever could. (Just think of all the music you listened to when you experienced your first heart break...!)

I wasn't exactly sure what it was about this song that I had heard for the first time when Flynn was 6 months old,  but when I listened more closely (and eventually caught all the words) it occured to me what moved me so deeply: I felt that this song was written perfectly for all three of the most important people in my lives, simultaneously. Chris, Trey and Flynn. All at once, and so equally and deeply relevant to each one. Beautifully entangled. 

"Hello, love. For you, I have so many words. 

 But I forget where we were..."

Chris,

Hello love.

For you, I have so many words.

But I forget where we were..."

I don't know what I would have done without you or what I would continue to do without you. 

This is my tribute to you, to what is ours, to who we were, are and becoming. 

In our almost five years of falling in love, the rocky and rough world of True Love that lies beyond initial infatuation, ensued to reveal the honesty of real relationship and union. However hard, ugly and full of love.

We became partners and have been married for four years beginning in our early twenties. (Well, yours. I guess I'll always be "the older woman". Sigh...) 

We quickly became the proudest parents to the greatest thing our love and lives had ever accomplished or created on that holy day of July 20th, 2016 at 1:27pm on a sunny Wednedsay afternoon. 

We navigated the new roads of parenting together. We grew up together to rise to the occasion of something bigger and brighter than anything we could have ever imagined or created alone. Our hearts grew in ways that are reserved for music and poetry for a boy that was so much bigger than us. 

We endured the most traumatic experience of our lives, combined, in a single afternoon that seemed to be sure to close the doors on our lives forever. 

But with each other's strength, compassion,  love and gentle motivation, we found whatever meaning we could find in our shared experience. We decided that it would amount to something that mattered. We determined ourselves and to each other, to make our loss something of worth, to allow it to shape us in whatever way was deemed fit. Even if that shaping seemed to tear our hearts and minds apart...

Our determination was met with grace. We were offered the opportunity and gift to love again with that portion of our hearts that had been seemingly severed. We were given the most perfect salve to our achingly desperate hearts. 

We were given the second greatest joy we had ever known to date:  we were privileged enough to greet another creation of ours into this world and laugh once more. 

We relish in the way he flourishes and how we are not worthy of claiming credit for his, nor Trey's, perfection. 

We laugh at every quirk with an attention to detail that can only come from knowing how fragile all of this is...

We wake up today with smiles on our faces that is reborn from the pure elation of being able to share our hearts, home and lives with another chance to be and do have what we have longed for and cherished with our entire beings. 

It seems so strange to think of all that we have endured in such a relatively short time.  We have endured things as a couple and as a family some will thankfully, thankfully never know. But the fact remains that we do know, and will forever be acutely aware of a pain that cannot be described...

We are changed people. We are a changed couple. We will never be who we once were. We have stretched and squeezed ourselves into such narrow spaces. Yet, we emerge intact, somehow. However imperfectly. 

Sometimes, it's easy to forget just where we were...

Thank you for walking this walk with me. I cannot imagine having done, nor doing this journey with not one other soul. 

You three have my heart. But you will have always had had mine first. Thank you for giving me our boys who held the experience of offering the awareness of the truest love I have ever known. Thank you for the steadfast love you have so freely given me. 

Thank you for being the father you are: a father after my own heart...

I love you.  I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart).

Always,

Taylor