ELEVEN YEARS AGO
It has been a season of change here on French Hill.
Damien left for college at the end of summer, and we’ve missed him dearly.
When they first moved here, Lenore used to sneak across the upstairs hall in the middle of the night to knock on her brother’s door after she’d had a nightmare, or simply when she couldn’t sleep.
It stopped after a while, maybe within the first year or so.
Last night was different. While I was curled up beneath the covers reading by the lamplight, there was a knock at my bedroom door.
Lenore came into the room looking distraught and sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed.
It took some coaxing to get her to tell me what was wrong, but after a while, she admitted that the boy she’d been seeing at school had “dumped” her for someone else.
I hesitate to call it her first heartbreak, because that would imply that only romantic love can cause heartbreak.
After all, what do we mean when we say a heart is broken?
Perhaps that some piece, big or small, has chipped away, and we’re mourning its loss.
It’s not only romantic love that makes up a heart.
A death in the family, the loss of innocence.
These types of heartbreak are permanent, and we mourn them because there is nothing we can do to recover that missing piece. We must learn to go on without it.
More often, though, heartbreak is not a fixed condition.
We might mourn what a relationship could’ve been, or a friend we don’t speak with anymore, but love isn’t finite, and we find deeper wells to fill in the gaps.
Sometimes we simply mourn change, even when it’s for the best. I think that’s all right, too.
I don’t know whether she would have knocked on my door if her brother still lived here, but it doesn’t really matter.
I cherish the conversations we have, because I know they won’t last forever.
Which means I will inevitably have to face the small heartbreak of her not needing me any longer.
But knowing that this is temporary … well, that only makes me appreciate it more in the meantime.