Sam and Emma: A Love Story in Emails - 11
from The Personal Journal of Sam T.
Entry for February 22, 2006
"I got home from work about forty minutes ago. I turned on the computer and got connected to the internet, so I could check my incoming email. Very few emails in today. Mostly spam, which I nuked. "
"After closing out my email account, I went into google. All day long, I had been thinking about Emma and I realized that I could not remember what she looked like. I could not remember her face. How could I have forgotten what her face looked like? She had been gone only a few weeks. And I had no photos of her. For all the times we had been together, we had never taken a picture together or given each other a photograph of ourselves. "
"On a hunch, in the search field, I typed in, "Emma A. Landauer," and ran a search. Her name cropped in 10 or 12 possible websites. I entered several of the websites only to find that they were just listings of dentists in the local area. In the sixth website, I scanned through the document. It was a pdf of a newletter from Rochester University in New York, dated in the mid to late 90's. I didn't find anything on the first 8 or 9 pages. Then the tenth page scrolled into view. That page contained an article about a group trip to Germany that associates at the university took together that year. And there she was, in the back row of the group, smiling at the camera. I couldn't believe it. My heart raced and a thousand memories flooded my brain. And feelings I had surpressed resurfaced in a rush that made me feel dizzy and excited and a little sad too."
"Her image was small and the features of her face weren't sharply defined in the photo. But I immediately knew it was her. I carefully studied her picture. Emma is tall and has blonde curly hair. She is built almost like one of Modigliani's models. And there was her smile... her wonderful smile."
"I stopped for a moment. My heart still raced, but a little slower now. I set the page as a favorite and shut it down. I miss her so very much. I do. I do miss her so very much."
"People come into our lives and touch our souls and sometimes leave us almost without warning. And there we are, left with this gaping void in our life. Emma hasn't been gone all that long and my pain is still very raw and very intense. Seeing her was almost more than I could bear. A photo is not the person. It is a moment captured in time and one cannot reach into the photo and touch the person or speak to the person. And she wasn't smiling at me. It was a different time and different place in her life and it had nothing to do with us together."
"I can't go on. This is just too much for me. I love Emma and I miss her so much. Nothing that I can do can bring her back to this place or change the way things are. Life is what it is. So what do I do now? Jacques Brels once wrote in one of his songs that when we become so numb that we can no longer cry or feel anything, we are no longer living. We just have to live with the pain that we are going to feel in our lives. That is a price we must pay for being alive. I don't have much of a choice, I guess.
What I shall do now is put one foot in front of the other and move forward, and go wherever that will take me. Without Emma... She has such a beautiful smile."
"Sam T."
Entry for February 22, 2006
"I got home from work about forty minutes ago. I turned on the computer and got connected to the internet, so I could check my incoming email. Very few emails in today. Mostly spam, which I nuked. "
"After closing out my email account, I went into google. All day long, I had been thinking about Emma and I realized that I could not remember what she looked like. I could not remember her face. How could I have forgotten what her face looked like? She had been gone only a few weeks. And I had no photos of her. For all the times we had been together, we had never taken a picture together or given each other a photograph of ourselves. "
"On a hunch, in the search field, I typed in, "Emma A. Landauer," and ran a search. Her name cropped in 10 or 12 possible websites. I entered several of the websites only to find that they were just listings of dentists in the local area. In the sixth website, I scanned through the document. It was a pdf of a newletter from Rochester University in New York, dated in the mid to late 90's. I didn't find anything on the first 8 or 9 pages. Then the tenth page scrolled into view. That page contained an article about a group trip to Germany that associates at the university took together that year. And there she was, in the back row of the group, smiling at the camera. I couldn't believe it. My heart raced and a thousand memories flooded my brain. And feelings I had surpressed resurfaced in a rush that made me feel dizzy and excited and a little sad too."
"Her image was small and the features of her face weren't sharply defined in the photo. But I immediately knew it was her. I carefully studied her picture. Emma is tall and has blonde curly hair. She is built almost like one of Modigliani's models. And there was her smile... her wonderful smile."
"I stopped for a moment. My heart still raced, but a little slower now. I set the page as a favorite and shut it down. I miss her so very much. I do. I do miss her so very much."
"People come into our lives and touch our souls and sometimes leave us almost without warning. And there we are, left with this gaping void in our life. Emma hasn't been gone all that long and my pain is still very raw and very intense. Seeing her was almost more than I could bear. A photo is not the person. It is a moment captured in time and one cannot reach into the photo and touch the person or speak to the person. And she wasn't smiling at me. It was a different time and different place in her life and it had nothing to do with us together."
"I can't go on. This is just too much for me. I love Emma and I miss her so much. Nothing that I can do can bring her back to this place or change the way things are. Life is what it is. So what do I do now? Jacques Brels once wrote in one of his songs that when we become so numb that we can no longer cry or feel anything, we are no longer living. We just have to live with the pain that we are going to feel in our lives. That is a price we must pay for being alive. I don't have much of a choice, I guess.
What I shall do now is put one foot in front of the other and move forward, and go wherever that will take me. Without Emma... She has such a beautiful smile."
"Sam T."
posted by hfireman | 8:24 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home