Through the Heart (36 page)

Timothy carried with him the certainty that I was his true love. And that was the real tragedy. Because the fact is, he was actually happier in his life the way it was than he would have been with me. It’s true, he loved me more—in the way that the world thinks of love. But that kind of love consumes you. It eats you up; it gives you no rest. He loved his wife in a gentle way and if she had died before him, he would have mourned her in the same way—gently, with fondness, but without the tearing sorrow he felt for me.

Those are the facts, and in life we always seem to want the facts. We look at statistics. We seek out explanations and hard evidence. We hope, with facts, that we will be able to control the events in our lives, or that if we can’t control them, at least the facts will explain them. We hope they’ll help us understand. That suddenly it will all make sense. That the mystery will be revealed. But have you noticed that the facts are like a blanket that’s not quite big enough? There’s always something of the unknown that’s left exposed.

Now that the story is over for me, I can see that the unknown isn’t something frightening. It is love itself. And when it comes, it is the one thing that is uncontrollable, unpredictable, unlimited. Even from here, where everything makes sense, that remains a mystery.