The Rear-View Mirror


I will never forget that moment. It is forever etched into my mind - frozen in time. Four little eyes wide-eyed staring. In an instant I knew. I could not model this for them. I could not let them think this was okay.

I had been in the driver's seat that day, and it was fitting. For while I still held on afterward for any strand of hope to let me know that this would not indeed be the end of a family, I knew it (again) in that moment in the SUV. The storm had erupted and I sat silently as it bounced through the walls of the vehicle. I glanced up. Their eyes. Those beautiful, wide child eyes. No. The decision had to be made and in that moment I had strength. I could not let them grow up thinking this was okay. I had done years of this and I had managed to get back up, to wipe the emotional blood off my palms and tears from my face. Yet I was always a little weaker each time. My cup was always a little less full, but I always got back up. Eventually that cup was empty, and I didn't get up again. I had finally given all. I had nothing left.

But this time, in the car, I had strength. There was nothing more to be said. I had given it 2 years from the time I knew it was probably going to unravel. I had given it 1 year from the time the words were shouted to me from a face of fury and hatred that forever changed my life. I died that day in June 2015 in the Bahamas, but I decided "one more year" to truly give it one last shot.

And now, it was done. And all it took was a glance in the rear-view mirror.

Today was one of those days. It was a rear-view mirror day for me. For so many of these months I spent hating. Forgiving, but never more forgetting. (Forgetting had gotten me in trouble, as I would allow the same situations back into my life. No. I will no longer forget.) But disliking and firming up my shores. Only the negative came into my mind, with some compassion that would forever now only be held at a distance.

Today's rear-view mirror were the positive things. The things I liked. The things I was grateful for. I had admired him. I had respected him. There were things that I, today, missed.

And that's okay.

But mostly today, I missed my girls. I reflected on how they are growing. How big they are getting. And how like life seen in the rear-view mirror, it's fleeting.

It seems that as I grow older, that the rear-view mirror becomes less exciting of the journeys we've taken, but more so, a reminder that the journey is coming to a close. I don't know why it comes to me that way, but it does.

And I look into the eyes of my Love and he desires only one thing from me - my love. To be his soft place while he is mine. It is in those moments of forgetting how fragile life is that I become familiar. And then I wake up again. It is he that will hold my heart. It is he that cradles me now.

The rear-view mirror will always be there, good and bad. And one day, it will be our last time to glance into its shiny image before it, and our lives, disappear completely. 

I am thankful for it. And so, on we drive. <3


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