Dear Mel,

During the day, I think about you. At night when I close my eyes, I see you in my dreams.  My world is at a standstill (Like the recent one between the US President and the Congress.  The famous government shutdown as they call it). You were the first Mellissa I ever met in my life. I’m yet to meet another one like you. Though I doubt I ever will. I decided to call you Mel because it sounds cool. It’s short and sweet. Mellissa sounds old fashioned and too long for a lazy person like me. It’s just like Damaris or Petronilla.  Though Petronilla can be shortened to Pet. That may not however be possible with Damaris.

I remember the first time I saw your face. I keep replaying that moment in my mind. It’s a moment I never want to forget ever.  It’s deeply transfixed in my mind.  Your face was glowing. It was brighter than the reflection of the morning sun rays on the cool waters of Lake Victoria. Your eyes radiated enthusiasm. They would later become my single weakness. My eyes locked with yours and every nerve within me shook.  My heartbeat rose and my breath fastened in a way that I had not anticipated.  This is something that never happened to me when I saw a Lydia or a Maureen or a Christine (No offence against people with such names). This only happened when I saw you Mel.  I wanted that moment to last forever. I wanted to remain in that state of positive emotional upset. I felt like my world had stopped. That’s what you did to me Mel. You stopped my world on our first meet.  It’s like the my whole universe paused and I couldn’t hit the play button no matter how hard I tried.

Then you walked right through the multitude of people straight to me.  It was a funeral right?  And there were mourners. A life had been lost.  Yet when I saw you walking towards me I felt like life had began for me. Deep in my mind, the part of my brain that is in charge of music had now put in play the song ‘From this moment by Shania Twain’. We all know the lyrics to that song but there is this catchy part breathes life to me whenever it plays. It goes:

             “From this moment, I have been blessed
               I live only, for your happiness
               And for your love, I give my last breath
               From this moment on”

I know I had just saw you Mel but in a way that I couldn’t comprehend, these lyrics were intensely playing in my mind.  Then there is this other part.

           “I give my hand to you with all my heart
             I can’t wait to live my life with you I can’t wait to start
            You and I will never be apart
            My dreams came true because of you”

This may sound like an exaggeration but this is the part that kept ringing loudly in mind. Some people say that love at first sight is cliché and a false narrative created by uncreative guys who want to get it easy in life. However, I can dispel that. When I first saw you I knew that you are all I ever wanted. All my life I had been making decisions and choices that I were unsure of but not this one. You walked with an aura of confidence and self-awareness that most ladies lack today. It’s like you knew that you were special and that you could do as you please. I had met so many ladies in my life and read so many books about ladies but it was not until I met you that I felt like I had discovered meaning in life. Who was that who said that the beautiful ones have not been born? I felt like looking for him then ask him to tell me again in simple terms what he meant by beauty because I was seeing right before my eyes a beautiful one who had been born and was all grown up.

When you finally reached where I was standing, I felt like you had been walking in slow motion. God knows the million things that had been playing through my mind.  Then you introduced yourself as Mellissa “with a double L”. I found that funny. Or maybe it wasn’t funny but I wanted it to be funny since it was coming from you. Love is truly wicked. It makes us find humor in non-humorous stuff.  I have since forgotten what you asked me that day.  I bet it was something to do with where you could get a shop around or whether there was a river around.  It’s unclear in mind.  What’s clear in my mind however is the fact that I knew I was never going to let you slip out of my life even though I knew nothing about you yet.

And that’s how it all started. That’s how we kicked it off.  There were no phones those days and our only communication was through letters.  I still have all the letters you ever sent me.  They are neatly stacked at the corner of my reading table.  They still have your scent. The writing in  them still smell of you.  I feel like there are certain English words and phrases that should have been left for you alone. Phrases like dangerous love, infinite love and monstrous passion never missed out in your letters. How could I not love your letters?

That explains why even so much later in life after acquiring phones I still insisted on you writing for me.  I found meaning in your words. I fed off them just like I fed off your energy. You see the way a dragon breathes fire? That’s the exact same way I breathed your words. I had never met a poetic lady in my life till you came along. I felt like God was smiling upon me with blessings. You were the primary blessing while your poetry was the secondary blessing. How could I not be grateful to God?  He gave me a lady who writes for me phrases like ‘ I want to reside in your heart’ or ‘ the meaning of life has appeared before me through you’. It’s these words that renewed my desire for you even during the darkest of days. It’s such words that shone the light through those dark days and made me see the way.

I have lost counts of the number of dates we went to.  At some point I wanted go on dates with you every single day.  Who could blame me?  You were infectious. By this time you had fully captured my heart. I am damn sure that if the doctors had screened my heart they would find you at the center chilling out with Pulmonary Vein and those other arteries with difficult names.  What amazes me to date is the simplicity in which we approached those days. No opulence. No flamboyance. Just simplicity.  Going for long walks.  Some days short walks would do. Other days we went to the museum and talked about art. And there are those days when we would star-gaze till midnight as we talked about going to faraway lands like Australia, America and Antananarivo.

I still remember our wedding day.  Very traditional, very cheap and very satisfactory. You understood that what mattered was not whether there was a mountain of a cake or a wedding gown that was two kilometers long. You knew that what mattered was just you and I. Nothing else.  It was our wedding not that of our parents or our relatives. And it turned out perfectly well as per your imagination. How could God give one person so much imaginative powers?  I admired that in you. What was God thinking when He was creating you? How could you have turned out so perfectly well?

Marrying you didn’t come as a surprise. I had played and planned it in my mind over and over again before it even happened. And when the day came, I knew exactly what to do and what to say.  I knew that I wanted to wake up beside you every morning for the rest of my life. I knew that our destinies were intertwined. I knew that I would tell you wild and scary stories on rainy nights. And that we would go swimming on sunny days. I had long memorized the wedding vows by then and when it was my turn to say them it sprang out not from the paper the priest was holding but from deep within my heart.  I knew I was yours and that you were mine.

And now as I sit on the floor in the middle of what used to be our bedroom, I ask myself why. Why Mel?  Why did you leave? Why would you choose suicide?  Suicide was not your thing. You loved life. You loved me. Did you not think of how devastating this could be to me?  Did you forget that you were the center of my world and that my life without you was totally meaningless? I have cried all I can.  It has hit me to my core.  I feel the pain all the way from my chest to my gall bladder. I feel torn apart. I feel like my world has stopped.  My days seem longer than the usual twenty four hours.
I still wonder what might have been the trigger to end it all. Were you troubled Mel? No. That can’t be possible. I knew you. I could have sensed it. Or did I wrong you in any way? I don’t think so too because you could have told me. You were straightforward with me. You never hid anything from me. Not a single day. You were the most transparent and honest person in my life. So then why did you do it? You could have at least left a suicide note to help me make a sense out of all these.

It’s only been three days yet I feel like you’ve been gone for ages.  I deeply miss you.  I miss your laughter.  I miss your cute dimples. How am I supposed to live with this pain?  It’s a heartbreaking misery. I can’t help but wonder where your soul could be right now and whether you could see how miserable I am without you.

This will probably be the last letter that I write you Mel. Unlike the previous letters, I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t know where to post it. Is there a post office in heaven where I could somehow send it over to you?  Or the Angels over there do not allow for letters from earthlings? Look at the position you’ve put me in Mel. This could have been much easier had you been alive. I want to be strong but I don’t know how. Everything I have reminds me of you. How do I even move on from you? How does man move on from his first and only love?

YOU WERE INFINITELY MINE.

GOODBYE MEL

From your love Aidan. 

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