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You never forget your first love, they say. Truth is, you never forget any of your loves nor do you forget those whom you never loved, but tried to because you know they thought they loved you. Often, the ones you remember the most, the ones you dream about for the rest of your life, even when you are with someone else, are the ones who will never realize what they could have had.

Twenty or so years from now, when you’re settled down and married, your daughter will start dating and you’ll see in her eyes that the boy she is with isn’t the one she wants to be with and you will tell her that you know what it’s like. She won’t believe you until years later, when she has lost touch with both of the boys. She won’t have forgotten them, though she’ll be married with her own children by then.

You (now old and widowed) will sit with her on the front porch and reminisce about old lovers and old loves. You’ll tell her about the boy you dated because you thought you might be able to love him and he was too good a friend to turn down. You’ll tell her about the boy who drove you to succeed because you had to prove to him (and the world) and he had missed out when he turned you away. You will tell her about how he reminded you of the ocean and you never managed to find out what lingered at the depths of his being. When you are done telling her about the ones whose paths left your own, you’ll talk about her father: his mischievous eyes and smile; the way he used to tease you and you would pretend to hate it, but in reality, it was what had made you fall for him; how the first time he kissed you, you thought you had found Heaven or Nirvana. You had never known a feeling like it before or again, except when he kissed you.

After visiting you, your daughter will go home to make dinner for her children and the man she married and loves, though he isn’t the boy she still dreams about on occasion and tells only you and her journal about.

After watching her leave, you will go inside your house and look at a picture of the man you’ll be joining soon (even death can’t part you forever). You’ll think about how guilty you felt to love him but write about the boy who “got away” and how much more it made you love him that he understood and didn’t hold it against you.

You will realize that the boy you wrote so many songs, poems, and journal entries about didn’t deserve you. The man whose photograph you held was the only one who could ever have made you happy, even though there were times when he made you sad. You will realize that life has been good. Then you will sit down in you husband’s chair, wearing nothing but the necklace he gave you in high school and your wedding band. You’ll wrap your naked body in his favorite blanket, close your eyes, and allow the last bit of your energy to slip away.

Your daughter will find your cold body the next day and will weep so much that she won’t be able to see with her red eyes, but she’ll understand that you had realized all you needed to learn in this life and had gone to join the man to whom you owed all your happiness.

She will insist that your long white hair be braided before they dress you in your old wedding gown and place you in the rosewood coffin that they will bury next to your husband, under the old willow tree where he proposed to you and where you gave yourself to him time and again. Like on the night you gave him your virginity and your naked bodies kissed Mother Earth and each other, you will again become one with him and with the Earth to create something more.

It won’t be your own child you will create this time, though. You will become flowers and willow trees. You will become the Earth, your husband, your old lovers, your ancestors and from you will spring the future of the world. From your body will come plants to nourish future generations. From you will come all possibilities: happiness, love, wisdom, religion (and denial of)…

It is the never ending cycle. Your mother should have told you about it, but if she didn’t, it wasn’t with the intention to keep the knowledge from you. She hadn’t discovered it yet, and though you’ve almost completed the cycle, you don’t fully understand it yourself. When all is said and done, you’re being reborn into something new, something greater, something freer and it feels wonderful to be free of everything that held you back before. Your spirit will fly through the cosmos as your body transforms. You will be back some day to be confined again in a body, but not until you have explored and enjoyed your new state.

You will visit your daughter and wish her farewell. She will be sitting, waiting for you. She’ll sense your presence and say her good-byes. You won’t despair, though, because you both know that the universe has a mysterious and wonderful way of working and you know you’ll see each other again.