Autumn

I remember him in the exact same way as I would remember my favorite season. The fondest memories I have of him are attached to the aspects of the changing weather around me. Every year I watch the seasons change and I’m reminded of how special he was to me.

He was smooth like the cool winds that blew on a chilly day. Brown like the colors of newly fallen leaves. The crisp smell of air first thing in the morning was never as comforting as his scent. A little moody, you never knew which way he was going to go, just like the weather in the fall. He had his rainy days, where I didn’t want to be around him. But at the same moment, his smile would shine through and brighten up my entire day like the sun.

He was my sun, and I was his Earth, his entire world. Independent of each other, living our own lives but we still needed one another to survive. I gave him purpose, inspired him to do something meaningful with his life. Despite any setbacks that might have been thrown at him, from being rejected at every job he applied for to living in my apartment when he was kicked out of his, I was there to let him know he was significant and was going to change the world.

But he gave me life, he helped me find hope and see the brighter side of all the dirtiness of this world. He brought light to every room we entered, spreading his charm and happiness like a disease. Kindness and compassion radiated from him at every moment without him even trying, and I found myself wanting to be as intensely and blissfully happy as he always was.

In the way the Earth gives the Sun purpose, and the Sun gives the Earth life, we needed each other to be the better versions of ourselves.

But just like the season, he came to an end. Abruptly snatched from my arms without a second thought. Unlike the season, I wasn’t able to see him again the next year. Gone from this life, and gone from this world in the blink of an eye.

Maybe that’s why I relate him to the autumn because the world around us is slowly dying, but it looks so beautiful as it does it that you don’t even notice. Or maybe because the crash happened in the summer and now I can’t stand the smell of the salty beach or the feeling of heat blazing down on me. I hate the thought of the summer. It could be because I can’t even bear the thought of spring because that’s when he proposed. Whenever I begin to see flowers bloom I begin to cry more than the April showers that rain down from the heavens. And winter is definitely out of the question, that was when they told me he had given up. That his body was slowly failing after being in a coma from the accident. And the sight of snow building up still reminds me of the specks of snow that fell upon his coffin.

But during the fall, our relationship was always the strongest it had ever been. Even after the accident, it was those autumn days spent in the hospital looking out the window as I told him about my day. I told him everything, and I’d like to believe he heard me each and every day. That those conversations continued to give him purpose. I told him about our families, kept him updated about his little sister and how she was starting middle school, the new job I had been offered, even the little things like me smiling more because I knew he would still want me to spread the positivity that he did so often.

I still visit him in the fall, tell him I love him as I set new flowers on his gravestone. I tell him how life is going, how his sister is in her senior year of college, how I got promoted at my agency, and how much I miss him being around. How much I miss his bright smile and charm. I tell him I wish the fall was year round because that’s when I’m the most content in life.