I found myself thinking about time recently. About time with Jim.

Past time.

I thought that I wish I could have bottled up certain times in our life together so that I’d still have them.

The bottles would sit up on the shelves along with our photo albums.

Any time that I found myself missing him (and when did I not?) I could open up a bottle, take a deep breath of its aroma, and go back to that time.

My heart loves that idea.

My heart aches to go back in time.

My heart would want to stay back there.

 

And therein lies the problem.

 

As much as I want to go back to those times and live them again …. I can’t.

I have to keep moving forward.

For my children, yes.

But more importantly …. for myself.

 

I cannot live in the past.

I cannot let my heart stay in the past.

If my heart stays in the past it will never get the chance to live again …. to feel again …. to love again.

And Jim wouldn’t want that for me …. or my heart.

I sure wouldn’t have wanted that for him had the tables been turned.

 

Sometimes it’s very hard to choose to move forward.

The past calls me back …. it beckons to my broken heart with the promise of never breaking it again.

And my heart never, ever wants to be broken again …. so it longs to stay in the past …. where Jim is.

Alive.

 

But my mind works overtime to turn my heart forward.

My mind knows that living in the past is not living.

It’s dying.

 

My mind wants to experience life again.

It wants to be content more than sad.

It wants to find happiness instead of depression.

It wants to feel joy again.

 

So my mind works hard to convince my heart to face today … just today …. and take a chance on living.

Yes, it might get broken again.

In fact, it will get broken again. More than once.

But before it gets broken it will feel again.

 

And then my heart realizes something important …

It would never trade all of the feelings it experienced with Jim …. even knowing that it would end up broken in the end.

Never.

My heart cherishes the time it had with him.

And the love it received.

 

And so my heart turns to today …. just this day …. and prepares itself to feel.

Again.

 

I think it’s a very good thing that I can’t put time in a bottle.