Love Lost

My dearest-sweet James,

The date is April the Eight, 1940 and I am writing to you desperate for some semblance of justice or closure, any semblance. The skies are bleak without you here, the world is different my love. I am plagued by the constant fear of what will happen next. Who you will be when you come home. Who I will be. How I will pick up these pieces and build a new life. One without you. I can’t believe those words are being written. What do you say about a man who gave you everything? How am I supposed to write a memento in the papers about a man who embodied the world. My world?

I put another photo of me in this letter—more hope that you will see it one final time and remember all the good times. I can’t help but to think of your soft blue eyes, your sly smile and warm embrace. My love, if ever there was a time for hope—it is now. I hope you don’t forget us wherever you are, wherever you go. I hope you don’t forget the love we shared. It is infinite and ever-reaching, a soul-tying love. A once in a lifetime find. Binding us across time, space and all the planets that dot our wondrous universe.

I never thought I would be left to ponder, watching lone leaves fall from a nearby neglected maple. It’s been weeks. Weeks since I heard your voice, weeks since I felt the paper you once held or traced your handwriting. Now they are all I have left.

You were supposed to come home. Two Sunday’s have passed since your command gave the bitter, bittersweet news. Their footsteps, stern knocks and stoic faces told me all I needed to know and yet here I am, still writing you. Clinging to my last bit of hope, that somehow my words will bring you life and breath and strength to keep fighting from wherever you are. I believe to my soul—as I confess to you now—that you are still out there somewhere waiting to be saved. I feel it in my bones that you haven’t left me. Not yet. Not yet…and it shakes me to my core that I can do nothing to find you, to save you. Nothing but pray.

Maybe my words will find you in the wind, the trees, and the deepest ocean and give you something to hold on to. You are a fighting man, a fighter. A strong, brave, fierce man that showed me nothing but love, devotion and equally fierce loyalty. As I to you and as I continue to show, even now, regardless of what happens moving forward. I am devoted to you and you alone. Always. My dearest love.

The wind whips by unrelenting as I rock in silence. Tears staining the pages as I write you. Icy drops of mist glide along my numb skin, cutting deeper than the words you never answered. Your last letter gone, lost to the sands of idle time. I watch leaf after leaf float atop our listless pool, rippling and bobbing like the chords of my soul. Plucked from oblivion. Never to be seen again, until they too eventually sink to the bottom.

I guess deep down I knew this day could always happen. I just never expected it. How I’ve allowed the waves of grief to consume me, patiently waiting at the edge of my heart like a ghost coming to take me away.

I shouldn’t even be writing this letter. Though it makes the time go by less frenzied to think somehow, someway you might respond. That maybe all this nonsense about you having gone missing and likely killed hasn’t yet happened. I awake each day with newly found vigor that you will come home to me once again. That maybe some mistake was made. That your plane didn’t crash. My heart claws up from my throat, with nowhere to go now that you’re gone. The tears well into crevices, spilling over in silent heaves as I scream to the sky. Begging for peace, for hope, for an answer, for solace, or warmth, or your sweet embrace. Something, anything is better than this hell of which I am currently trapped.

I wrap myself tight in layers of blankets out on the back patio of our pool deck wishing you were here. The yard seems so large without your presence. So daunting, so looming—as it leers back at me. Watching me sleep, watching me contemplate life—a life that might go on without you. My dearest love. My greatest adventure. I have yet to go back inside our home for fear that this all will become too real…and my love, I can’t have that. Please, I beg of you, don’t take this letter the wrong way, it isn’t your fault, what happened. I know that, but as things stand, I cannot go another moment in this limbo. Our love was too deep, too strong for all that frivolous non-sense and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We have come too far, weathered too many storms in all our short years of marriage for this to be the end. Please. I beg of you, please come home. In whatever capacity that may be. I will be here waiting, ready. Don’t you ever forget that. Ever. Know that I will be here in all the waves of the ocean, the moon and sun in the sky, dotting for miles as far as the eye can see. I will wait for you forever, and in every life, I will always chose you, no matter what. Without hesitation.

As the hours have passed. All I can think about is where in the world you are, where you last pinged as you flew over the sea. Enemy territory was all they told me. No specifics—just as you would have wanted—me not to worry. But that can’t and won’t be helped. I worry for you every breath of the day, every fiber of my being because we are one and the same. I for you, and you for me. I will worry for you always, until I know where you are and can bring you home. You have my heart, my soul, my being, my love, my spirit, my mind and my body. I will fight to bring you back. Every day of my life.

Until we meet again. I will see you soon.

All my love,

Your Cora