I Swear You Will Be Fine

Dear Josh,

How foolish was I again? The other day, I opened our scrapbook. For context, in case you have boyfriend memory, I am quite a sentimental person and enjoy scrapbooking parts of gifts or whatever I can of our days. This scrapbooking hobby started when I was teaching. I was gifted a lot of letters and drawings from my children, and I kept all of them. I was so grateful for the children that I started scrapbooking aspects of the gifts they gave me too – gift wrappers, ribbons, cards, etc. When we first started dating, I opened a whole new notebook for us – for me to scrapbook parts of our dates, the flowers you gave me, the wrappers of gifts you (or your family) lovingly wrapped me, and more. In that little book, I also had photo strips of us from photobooths we’d take. I’d write little notes about our day or the date we had. I even kept the 3D glasses we got from Halloween Horror Nights. You thought this idea was pretty cute and I was ready to preserve this book for our wedding day and the days that followed. As I created our scrapbook, I thought of how nice it would be for us to have something to look back on in the future. I imagined us, older and a little wrinkly, sitting together and looking back at this pinkish-yellowish Stitch notebook that houses a piece of our love.

As I was saying, the other day, I opened our scrapbook. Up until this point, I thought I was holding my grief and sadness pretty well. Most days, I manage to keep things together. I try not to cry, definitely not in front of others, and I think, all things considered, I was regulating my feelings pretty well. I was looking, albeit desperately, for healthy coping mechanisms and even pumped my uncle’s bike to cycle on days that I don’t have school – just to do something. I was really, really trying. Not sure what my goal was, but I think I was just trying to gain a sense of normalcy? Or maybe function better? I might have been working towards a version of me that could be okay and sad at the same time – kind of like, holding the sadness within yet functioning. Well, I was quite wrong. I thought I had reached that goal – or was almost nearing that goal – but I clearly wasn’t.

I opened our scrapbook and for the first few pages, I was alright. I smiled looking at our photo strips. We are cute. There’s one impromptu photobooth picture we took while running errands and the little note I wrote was, “We both agreed that this picture is unglamorous.” I remember us walking out of the photobooth and collecting this particular photo strip, then saying, “Not at all worth $10.” Funny, now I’d say it’s worth a million.

The next few pages, I started to get sad. Halloween Horror Nights. My birthday. The Gardens by the Bay date where I first met your Uncle and his family – that was where we took soooo many pictures and nearly spent the whole day out. I’m so grateful for that day.

The next few pages were where grief unexpectedly hit me. It was as if I knew that I wasn’t about to see anything happy because I flipped the page extra slowly. The next page was 2025 – the wrapping paper of the puzzle you never gave me, and the receipt from where I bought the necklace I still wear of your name, the names of the boys, and our anniversary date. It was all just slow and soft tears as I flipped through all the moments we didn’t get to have. I thought that was that. I thought that was all the grief I was about to experience – I was wrong again. I flipped to the page of my birthday in 2025. The cards, now from your family instead of you; all the love you didn’t write. All of them wishing things were different.

Just when I thought I had everything under control, I was proven so wrong. Nothing is under control. I was never planning on “getting over” this. I was never planning on moving on, so tell me why I was so surprised when grief hit me? How am I still in disbelief that I’m looking back on our memories alone? We aren’t old and wrinkly. We will never get to be old and wrinkly together. We will never get to laugh at how we thought some pictures were not worth our money. We will never get to take more photobooth strips. Those few that we have are all we will ever have. How could they be all we have?

I feel like this scrapbook is physical evidence of our love and I’m more than a little upset that this is all we have. This is not at all representative of the love we share – I’m aware of that. I’m aware that what we didn’t get to do does not negate what we did. I never thought that I was getting over this grief, but this moment affirmed that I am never getting over this. There is no getting over this. I can’t tell if the thought of that comforts or scares me.

I can’t wait to see you again. I heard you visited your sister in her dreams! Keep visiting us, okay? We miss you so much. I love you more, always, and forever.

Love always,
Sha