I never knew what you saw in me.

When you were alive, there would be moments where I would pull your face close to mine and stare, and you would always laugh it off like it was a joke.  At the time I guess I didn’t understand why I was doing it either, but looking back, I think I was trying to make out my reflection in your eyes, as if maybe, if I looked hard enough, I would be able to see myself through them. 

But I never could see what you saw.  

Others couldn’t either, I don’t think.  

I had a past.  I had issues and shortcomings.  I was unrefined and unfinished.  

I used to think that you just chose not to see those things, or that you idealized me so much that you couldn’t see them.  I used to think that if you’d been given more time, those parts would have outweighed whatever good you saw in me.  

But the longer I’ve had to sit with my grief and the sincere yet imperfected love we had (and still have) the more I can see that you didn’t ignore these things; on the contrary, you saw them all but had the understanding to know that the sum of all of my broken parts added up to a very real and very human person.  

So I know now what you saw: You simply saw me.  

A person who by the grace of God was called “yours” for a little while.   

You saw me as a person weighed down by crosses she couldn’t see herself.  A fellow wayward human struggling to shoulder burdens she couldn’t remember picking up and didn’t know how to put down.  I would always ask you if I was more a “burden” or a “blessing” but I now know that the burdens, and the sharing of them, were the blessings.  

You could see all this, and you helped me carry what you could while you were here because you understood what I didn’t at the time: where I was supposed to be going.  

I never understood why you walked with me during the last two years of your life until I got to where you were leading:  To the foot of the cross of the One who would help me carry what I simply could not anymore.  You were leading me to a place where I would be spoken for throughout eternity.  

But you spoke for me here.  

Of all the voices I’d heard before you and all the voices I will hear after, nothing will ever change the fact that I was lucky enough to be spoken for on this Earth.  By you.

Nothing will ever change the fact that I was lucky to hear my name being called by your voice.  

I know this now.  

And I also know that your name is still being said by the One who called us into existence to begin with, albeit in a tone and pitch which I cannot perceive.  I know it’s still being said though. I know you still exist.

And I know when my time on this Earth is done too, when I, like you, have seen my last birthday, we will once again be a part of the same melody.  

Two notes among many in the same song: a song of gratitude, a song of love, a song that will ripple through eternity itself.