LOVE | I Carry Your Heart

THIS IS A RE-POST FROM A YEAR AGO. Today would have been our first anniversary. I didn’t want it to go by without being acknowledged. Bill was always and continues to be a big part of who I am.

This was to be our commitment day, our non-wedding, wedding. A party to accompany the legal documents signed months before when he first moved in, to make our life more real.

Because, you know, we were going to beat HepC, liver disease, have a transplant and he was going to live with me forever. Until he didn't.

I'm writing this post as a container to hold everything that was to be my contribution to the ceremony. (Warning: I wasn't the romantic one!)

I booked The Oakville Club which is an intimate space that meant a lot to our family and wouldn't hold a crazy number of people (he'd have invited absolutely everyone he'd ever met!). Beyond our combined eight kids, we had/have a great group of friends and family - all so happy to see us happy, it was going to be a full event.

We agreed that we’d walk together toward the officiant to I Choose You by Sara Bareilles. The song resonated with both of us. (He had no idea that I was looking into her actually being there performing throughout the whole ceremony and though I balked (a bit) at the cost, it was going to be worth it since he knew her entire song catalogue and loved her beyond words.)

Of course, a DJ would be back-up and The Boss would be played often. As well as Train's Marry Me, and The Spark by William Prince, and Best of You by Andy Grammer with Elle King, and Fall On Me by Great Big World with Christina Aguilera. I have a whole list of songs on Spotify that remind me of Bill and our time together. Bill and I often (weirdly) spoke to each other in song lyrics - so many songs were so appropriate for our relationship. He loved music as much as I did - what? How is that possible? We'd have danced and sung all night. (Beyond all of those songs, after Bill left this plane of existence, a friend said this song: A Thousand Years by Christina Perri fit our story best. She might be right.)

Back to the planned ceremony ...

He insisted that we would write our vows to each other. I agreed, though I was going to crib mine completely from e.e. cummings and his brilliant work:

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in

my heart) i am never without it (anywhere

i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling)

i fear

no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want

no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

“[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in]” Copyright 1952, © 1980, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust, from Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Source: Complete Poems: 1904-1962 (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 1991)

It was a heady prospect to finally 'marry' a beautiful man who was not only the love of my life but a romantic poet through to his soul. I didn't want to disappoint him - silly, I couldn't really, he loved me flaws and all, but so many words have already been written that were better than those I would use on my own.

We wanted our friends and families to share in our finally acknowledged joy in each other. We'd been friends forever, denied our early desire by a misunderstanding only to have it haunt us. I was blessed with him in my life, and I like to believe that he was lucky to have me, too. His aunt, the nun, calls me his miracle. The reality is that he was mine.

I miss him terribly. Rarely does a day go by that I don't tear up at a memory of his silliness, or his pain or his love. He was my most favourite weirdo.

I hope that everyone experiences a love like ours. Raw. Unconditional. Real.