She drifted and dreamed, sometimes so vividly that she couldn’t tell if she was dreaming or simply thinking about him.  He was always the common thread - his voice, touch, his gaze and his scent.  His scent! She always believed that the first way to tell if you were compatible with someone was to trust your nose.   It sounds awful, she thought, but when she first kissed him and pressed her face close to his, she knew she was home.  “He smelled like home”, she thought.  What a way to begin a romance!

It seemed like she was off in the distance watching a movie of her life.  She knew things had changed dramatically.  She remembered the day that she felt the pain in her head and then the drowning and the darkness.   She eventually came out of the dark but it was not like being awake.   She felt that she was floating through images, feelings and thoughts.  She sensed periods that were brighter and warmer than others.  These were usually the times when she sensed that he was with her or nearby.   But as hard as she tried to reach him, she could not.

His connection to her had always been intimate.  He touched her emotionally and physically.  He looked directly into her eyes when she spoke.  He was meticulous in his attention to her.  He listened.  He was happy when she was happy.  He wore an aftershave that she bought him even though she knew he didn’t like it.  He did as much for her as he could and she for him.  This was “big” love she thought.

She doted on him.  She wondered how he was doing without her help.  She wanted to reassure him but didn’t know how.  She felt as if she were locked in a vault.  There was no way to communicate with him, to tell him that she was still there, still with him.  Or does he know?   He always had a way of knowing what was happening inside of her.  Sometimes he knew what she was thinking before she did.  She didn’t want him to lose track of her.  She wasn’t ready for that.  On some level she knew he was still keeping guard and still with her.  This was comforting but also sad because she couldn’t tell him she knew.  

She began feeling that she could somehow rejoin him if she could just figure out the mechanics of it.  She felt so close to him sometimes that she could hardly bear it.   She concentrated hard at those moments, urging her body to respond and to reach out but it seemed like an impossible task.   The attempts to touch him were so frustrating.   The longing pushed her back into the comfort of her dreams.  She was with him in the bright sunlight walking by the lake.  She felt the sun and smelled the water.   She was enveloped by his love.   She was intoxicated by her love for him.   When she was torn from these memories she felt the pain.   She wanted to reconnect with him to hold him and touch him and not to leave him ever again.  

She became aware that the moments of pain began to dominate her.   Being that close to someone you love without being able to tell them so, was excruciating.   The communication of their feelings was crucial.   “I know how you feel,” he would often say.  And darn if he didn’t know how she felt.  It seemed that everything that happened to her was understood by him.   He used to say that all of the experiences of his life prior to meeting her happened so that he would be able to love her.  She understood that this relationship was a rare gift.  It’s not like she dated that much.  She could not believe it random.  There must be some reason we are together, some purpose.  They would spend hours talking about how they felt.  He believed that in order to really understand an issue, you must not give in to frustration. If you abandon an issue, true feelings and issues will not emerge and the real problem will not be identified and solved.  He said emotional work was like water circling down a drain.  You talked about the same things over and over again each time getting closer to the truth.  In some ways, she felt that she too was circling above a drain.  Her memories were like the water in the sink.   What she feared most was that in the end she would disappear and so would he.