Absence makes the heart grow fonder

If time is a doctor, then this doctor is a rather poor one. Probably a quack of sorts.


This whole week, I felt like Jenny had just died yesterday. But in fact it has already been 5 months or 154 days to the exact, since she left us.

I have accepted that my grief journey would be like a roller coaster ride. Or some kind of a yo-yo. With all the lows and the highs. But for much of this week the yo-yo cord got overstretched and the spinning disk was stuck at the low end.

Jenny kept popping into my field of view.  Even when I was not looking at her pictures, now ubiquitous features around my domicile and office space.

I suppose absence makes the heart fonder. 

In fact, I recall telling her exactly that.  It was many years back.  Back, when we were tenderly younger, unmarried and amidst the heydays of our courtship together.

I was then a full-time student and residing in the hostel within the university campus, located remotely at the far-end of our island country. We would date only on Saturday evenings, which was all the time I could spare to maintain our relationship. As a mature student at the tail-end of my twenties and on full-pay scholarship, I was under serious pressure to chalk up good grades so all week long I would be too absorbed in my studies to spend time with her. Flunking the course would put me into dire straits. I could not even imagine the consequences. In local terms I became the ever “kiasu” or afraid-to-lose kind of nerdy student.

So a week of classes and relentless mugging was never enough time for me. I was always hard-pressed to complete tortuous piles of tutorials and assignments. Jenny on the other hand would be waiting earnestly  for my phone call to her home or office so we could arrange our week-end rendezvous. Sadly, as a residential student holed up in a remote corner of the island, it was a lot harder if not impossible for her to reach me.  Mobile communication was of course non-existent in those ancient days. For her then, working in an office job, the week must have been agonisingly long.

“But absence makes the heart fonder, dear”, I told her on one of our weekend dates, speaking in as comforting a tone as I could honestly muster.

She was feeling somewhat insecure. And it was plain for me to see as she chose not to hide it. With the campus rife with hordes of warm-blooded female young things in close proximity, I could be easily distracted. And a lot could happen in the course of a week.

“It’s more like out of sight, out of mind”, she replied.

She was clearly unpleased about our frequency of meeting up and how our relationship was panning out ever since I took up the scholarship and started on full-time studies.  Admittedly, I was too wrapped up in 3^rd order differential equations or finite element analyses to be zealously romancing about her.  Or to fool around on campus also.

As it turned out, our love stayed the course, even as over that crucial year after I had embarked on full-time studies, we saw less of each other than what she had wanted.

Come the year-end vacation we received news that the apartment we had applied for was ready for occupation, so shortly after the key collection we tied the knot and got married. No more of that horrid hostel stay for me. I was to complete my following two years of study in our newly acquired abode, a beautiful executive flat with two levels of dwelling space. I was now safe in her arms. Or at arms-length at least.

And from that point we would be always together, build a family, living happily ever after. Or so we wished. Until she got struck by cancer and left me early.

Too early.

And now I could not get her out of my mind even if she is plainly out of sight.
 
So Jenny Dearest, I was right and you were wrong.  Out of sight does not necessarily mean out of mind.  And absence did make the heart grow fonder. How I miss you now.  There is a constant ache inside that I could not shake off. I feel stressed, panicking even whenever it hits me that I will never be able to see you again, much less hold you in my arms or run my fingers through your long flowing hair.

I suppose I have only myself to blame. I have put up enough of her pictures on various parts of the house and my office so every which way I look she is almost always in sight.  My screen-saver pushes out her digital images, a new one every ten seconds whenever the computer goes into a lull. Most of these photographs were taken on our year-end holidays, happy and carefree moments forever locked in time. In the streets of Bali, along the beaches of the Gold Coast and the central town hall in Brussels and Bruges, she struck up her best poses. Smiling radiantly, she had the world at her feet, clueless that those happy days were well numbered. And that for me and the kids, life would soon be a sideway drift.

It is clear that I am not working hard enough on getting her off my mind.