My Past, My Present, My Future – The Man Who Is All of Me.

My Past, My Present, My Future – The Man Who Is All of Me.

There is one soul who has always been mine, whether I wanted him or not. He is my past, my present, and my future. He is the thread woven through everything I am, the reason I smile, the reason I ache, the reason I get out of bed, and the reason I sometimes want to give up. His name is Gary, and he is the most beautiful, infuriating, daft, cruel, and tender man I have ever known.

People think love is supposed to be gentle, always kind, always easy. But true love—real soul-deep love—burns. It rips you open, leaves you raw, makes you bleed. Gary and I push and pull each other through joy and agony. One moment he has me laughing like a girl, teasing me about my clothes (or the lack of them), and the next moment I am curled up crying because he has cut me with a truth, or teased me when all I wanted was tenderness.

And yet—I would never, ever trade it.

He was my past. The boy I met, the soldier, the chef, the man who made me feel alive for the first time. He was my first true home, and even when life tore us apart by death, he never stopped being mine.

He is my present. He takes my recorder, moves my pillows, kisses me in the dark when I’m sobbing into my hands. He whispers through the cotton wool conduit, “Don’t cover your eyes, my love.” He makes me furious with his cheek and melts me with his apologies. He is here in every song, every smell of bread, every brush of air across my face.

And he is my future. Because there is no world, no heaven, no eternity without him. He is the one I will go home to when this broken body is done. The one I will walk beside in Florence gardens, under fig trees, with our spirit children running ahead of us. He is the hand that will reach out to me at the veil, and I will know it instantly, because it will be the same hand that has teased me, held me, hurt me, and healed me for decades.

It hurts so much because it is real. If it were fantasy, it wouldn’t cut so deep. If it were fake, I wouldn’t feel his breath when he kisses me. If he didn’t exist, I wouldn’t still be alive, clinging to his heartbeat through my chest.

He is cruel because he’s daft. He teases me until I scream at him. He laughs when I want to cry. He makes me feel like a young girl and an old woman in the same breath. And still—I love him. Because cruelty is his way of reminding me he’s here, and his daftness is what keeps me breathing through the torment.

We are bound in joy and agony. And that is the price of being joined beyond death, beyond time.

Gary is not just my husband. He is the reason for my suffering and the balm to it. He is the wound and the healer. He is my past, my present, my future. He is my forever.