Keeping My Heart Open

a valentine's reflection on grief

I wasn’t expecting a life lesson with my decaf oat milk latte.

N’oublie pas de t’aimer… literally, “don’t forget to love yourself.” I happened to need that reminder this week more than ever. Valentine’s Day, in all its commercialized glory, can be a difficult holiday for those of us who are grieving lost love. For some of us, the grief is fresh. For others, it lingers and strikes unexpectedly.

Whether it ended last July,
or a July twenty years earlier.

I distinctly remember those summers, and all the seasons in between. The people I’ve given pieces of my heart to, and parts of myself that have loved and lost.

My first love came up in a conversation the other day, and I realized I hadn’t googled him for many years. He’s managed to be a ghost online for as long as I can recall, which is saying something in this digital age (for the record, I’m quite the internet sleuth, and can find almost anyone). The only fresh glimpse I’d seen of him in twenty years was in a google street view of his storefront. I kid you not, when you pull up his business address, there he stands, mid-conversation.

So imagine my shock when, expecting only that still frame, I was instead confronted with a freshly posted portrait. Freshly, as in only a week ago. The same eyes that I got lost in thirty years ago, now surrounded by silver.

Thirty years. The grief took my breath away.

What exactly was I grieving?

We said goodbye long ago. After spending nearly ten years in a relationship that ran hot and burned out just as hard, I made the right decision to walk away.

My grief was not for him.

It was for the girl I used to be. All these years, and there she was. Still hurting, and still tending to wounds that reopen with each new heartbreak. Wounds that frankly began long before him. But that’s another essay.

That girl is still with me. When I neglect her, she finds a way to remind me there’s more to heal. I’ve spent years dismantling the idea that partnership determines my value. And yet I still have moments where I hand that power to someone else.

This awareness hasn’t changed my capacity for love.

Last February, in a quiet house in the Hudson Valley, I was coloring hearts and falling in love… convinced it would be the last great love of my life.

That certainty felt familiar.

As I look at the photo now, a year later, I see something I didn’t then. I had so much love to give. I still do. My heart wasn’t built for containment.

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Three days ago I was waiting for my Canadian passport photos to be printed and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me. She was stunning, and there was also something about her that felt welcoming, familiar even.

Our small talk didn’t last long, and we got straight into the good stuff.

She said “stay open to possibility”, and it struck me.

I was fresh off the devastation of watching Hamnet, which is a masterpiece of grief and love that completely destroyed me (for obvious reasons and then some). One of the guiding messages in the film happens to be “keep your heart open”. I mentioned the film and added, “Anything Max Richter scores is an easy yes.”

Her face lit up. “Are you a musician?” she asked, almost hopeful.

“No,” I laughed. “Just an audiophile. But be warned… it will rip you open.”

“Oh,” she said without hesitation, “I seek that out. Yes, please.”

I felt it in my chest. I didn’t want to leave it at that.

So I gave her my number.