“Forget the former things; don’t dwell on the past.” ~ Isaiah 43:18
Every year, a Valentine arrived for Clara. It slid through
the mail slot with the same soft scrape, landing on the kitchen tile as it had
for a half-dozen years. Cream envelope sealed in red wax pressed with a heart
shape. No return address.
She didn’t open it
right away. She never did anymore. At first, she laughed at the mystery. A
secret admirer had felt romantic then, almost flattering. But mystery wears
thin when it repeats itself without explanation, especially when it arrives on
the same date a life ended.
Jonah had died on a
February evening. Rain-slick roads. A Sheriff’s phone call split time into
before and after. The cards began the following year, cryptic messages like, “Don’t
stay. Move,” always closing with the same initial: -V.
This year, the
envelope felt heavier. She hadn’t seen the photograph inside for years: her and
Jonah at the overlook, the ocean stretched endlessly behind them, the wind
carrying their laughter over the cliff. The night before everything fell apart.
Her hands trembled as she read the card. “Meet me where our sun last
disappeared.” -V.
Her eyes fell on the
man at the railing. He wasn’t Jonah, though the resemblance made her heart
stumble. He introduced himself simply as Victor, Jonah’s twin brother.
The truth unfolded
slowly. Jonah hadn’t died that night, not right away. He survived, but his
memory was broken, shards of his former self scattered. His heart still loved her deeply, even as his mind no longer remembered her.
“He believed you deserved a whole man,” Victor began.
“So, he stepped back, giving you space to grieve. The cards had been Jonah’s
idea, when he could no longer write them, I interpreted his meaning. He died
last spring. This time, completely.”
Victor handed her one final Valentine before leaving. The
script carried the final words to his forever love: “Don’t dwell on the life
that ended with me. Move forward where I can’t.”
The sun disappeared. Grief didn’t leave Clara that night,
but it loosened its grip. Love, she realized, doesn’t always stay beside us.
Sometimes it keeps watch from a distance, asking only that we keep living fully.
Jonah hadn’t been asking her to remember him. He’d been
asking her to release him.
When the next Valentine’s Day arrived, Clara didn’t wait for
the mail slot to clink open. She wrote a card of her own, sealed it in red wax,
and left it inside a book on the bookshop’s free shelf. Inside were just four
words: “Keep moving forward, always.”
Lord, thank You for love that remains even
after loss. Give us courage to release what we cannot keep, and strength to
walk forward into the life You still have for us. Amen
