Heartbreaking

There's photographic proof. Year's of it. They were the beautiful, young lovers at university, she blonde, waif-like, beautiful, kind, smiley; he skinny, long-haired, just as beautiful. It was at that time, the one when everything seemed perfect, the air was clear, we were filling our brains with learning and love and the freedom of youth and they were like a snapshot of it - the perfectness of young love.

Their's lasted, it wasn't a fleetingly beautiful moment in a small, dusty town that swelled hearts, broke them and swelled them again, their's was more. As is the nature of leaving university we all scattered in the wind. They married, more photos of love, and with the invention of Stalkbook, suddenly those pictures were there for all of us to see, to be allowed to believe in love. The photos documenting them, and us, growing slightly older, possibly wiser (or not), but settling.

That's what the photos showed - them, love, a clarity in it all that I've seldom seen. It was tangible through the pictures although I didn't see them in 'real life' after varsity. In a moment it was over. No, that's not true, I heard the whole story, it wasn't a moment, it was over time, as cancer ate her alive, that beautiful, waif-like creature, so young, so lovely, so in love. And he was left. Alone.

My heart breaks at the cruelty of it. She died a couple of years ago now but an old friend was here over the holidays, a good friend of his, so it came up and I recoiled, again, at the heartbreak of it.

She saw him while she was here and reported that he is healing, smiling again, and I'm almost 100% certain that that is making her smile too, in the ether.