Dearest Catherine,
As I write this letter, the world below sleeps. I am in my chamber, alone.
Thoughts and feelings rush through me. Many of these feelings I have never known before. Some I have only known through books. Some...I could never imagine. You may never receive this letter, but I must write it, if...only to begin to understand, understand all these...things that are happening to
me.
The night I found you in the park, the night I first saw you, proved to be both the darkest, and the brightest night of my life. In the days before that night, I had been filled with a growing emptiness, the deep, nameless longing that I could not understand. It was... a shadow, and that shadow loomed inside me. I had lost my hope. I felt, no I knew I would forever be alone. I walked that night, the streets, the alleys, as I had walked so many nights before. The city seemed cold and empty. The park, my place of comfort, was dark and strange. Then something stopped me. I saw you, and my life...changed...forever. Against everything I knew, all the rules of our community, I brought you into my world. In my mind there was no choice, there was no time. I could feel your will to live...it called to me...all my doubt, all my pain...lifted. Your spirit called to me, and I knew I had to see you live. Those days I spent with you caring for you, reading to you, watching over you, were the sweetest days I had ever known. You trusted me. You let me give...and as you healed, I healed, too. And then you opened your eyes, and you saw my face. I saw your fear, felt it...cut through me. In that moment, I believed the dream was lost, but you had the courage to look at me, to see me, to truly see, and in your eyes I saw something I had never known. I saw a world of possibilities, for me.
I...our time was short - soon you were well. Before we parted at the basement of your apartment building you...lay your head on my shoulder. I...I could not speak. Even...even now there are no words. And when voices from above broke the stillness, there was no time to say good-by. Over and over again I have tried to say good-by to you, Catherine, tried to remember, tried to forget. Now I know good-bye was never meant to be. We are part of each other. Whatever comes, we are part of each other, and we found each other. Perhaps, that is our destiny.
Do you remember the poem I read you?
Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours,
For one lone soul, another lonely soul.
Each choosing through all the weary hours
And meeting strangely at one sudden goal.
Then they blend, like green leaves with golden flowers
Into one beautiful and perfect whole.
And life's long night is ended,
And the way lies open onward to eternal day.*
Sleep well, my dearest Catherine, sleep well.
Vincent
