"I want to stop by later and say hi" he said. These are not everyday words. But this was not an everyday visit.
He walks in sober and full of life. Hugging. Smiling. Eyes shining.
"I have a little present for you," he says. He hands it to me wrapped in pretty paper. Sort of oval in shape. Weighty in my hands.
To the unknowing eye, it would look like a glass soap dish with an ornate silver frame. Ah, but this is no ordinary gift.
In this little dish lies year after endless year of broken dreams, broken promises, and broken needles.
This dish is full of hatred so deep it's consuming...and deception - always looming in the dark corners of every hopeful encounter.
And it holds that hope, my hope, often slip-sliding away, like a glimmer of something hidden in the mud...the mud of so many tears...
(Car wrecking, hospitalizing, baby crying, vodka smelling, bleeding, oh God...he's dying!! tears...)
This little dish contains it all. All of the gut-wrenching, back alley, life-or-death, (more death than life), nightmares too intense for sleeping...devastating love.
It holds my shattered heart.
I look into his clear, bright eyes and hug him hard..."Thank you" barely squeezing out past the lump in my throat.
Could any gift be sweeter? Is there a treasure in this world of more value?
This beautiful, wonderful, marvelous, enchanting, best-gift-ever...dish.
