Page 70 of Pieces of Me

I nod.

“You want me to read it?”

“Yes.”

Mia huffs out a breath, squaring her shoulders before bringing the phone to her eyes.

“Dear Younger Me. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, but the timing never seemed right. It seems that I’ve covered almost all the important things that life might throw your way, but there’s one thing I haven’t covered yet, because, well… I don’t think anyone or anything can ever really prepare you for it.

Are you ready?

Love.

There it is.

Four little letters.

One simple word.

Love.

Love is both a blessing and a curse, and as much as I want to tell you that you’ll only ever experience one side of it, I don’t want to lie to you. Love is going to hurt you and betray you, and that’s okay because love is more than just a word. Love is an emotion that’s meant to befelt.

Feel it.

Accept it.

In every way.

Because love exists all around us, it doesn’t just come in the form of a person you hope to spend the rest of your life with.

Love can be someone you meet who you connect with right away. Someone who wants to share hours of her time with you, daily, laughing and talking and getting to know you.

Love can be a six-foot-five Goliath of a man attached to twenty-year-old clay pots because he loves his family’s legacy as much as he loves his family.

Love can be something so small as your fifty-year-old male driver knowing you’re going through a rough time and blasting Taylor Swift on the car ride to the airport because he thinks it will help.

Love has many forms—it can be a simple act of kindness, or it can be deep and profound. And while society will make you believe that true love has no end, here’s the best part: Love doesn’t have to be infinite for it to be real.

This is the last entry I’ll be writing to you, Younger Me, so I’m going to leave you with this… something I once wrote in the pages of a sketchbook filled with hand-picked daisies:

You are privileged and honored to have been loved by Holden Eastwood. Even for a couple of months. A few weeks. A single day. Even if you didn’t know it at the time. Love has the ability to change you. To heal you. Let Holden heal you.”

30

Jamie

It’s kind of amazing how manythingspeople can accumulate in a lifetime. Not that I can judge Esme and her husband, Wesley. I’m a third their age and live alone in an RV, so I tend to collect memories, not material possessions.

After his death, Esme had donated most of Wesley’s things, so I’ve spent the past week packing mainly her stuff. It’s been… honestly, it’s been hard. Thankfully, the ladies from her church have dropped by a few times to help, and they’ve been a literal godsend. They’d organized trucks to take away the furniture and donate it to people in need. So now, I’m standing in the living room surrounded by trash bags and boxes—the only things left of a married couple’s entire lifetime together. I think I’ve packed close to fifty boxes. When I emptied my RV, everything I wanted to keep fit intwo.

The two boxes had arrived earlier in the day, and they’re still in the entryway. While I wait for my dinner to arrive, I grab a knife from the kitchen to slice open the tape.

The first box I open has some clothes. The second has what material possessions I’ve collected the past four years. Mainly dumb things I thought I needed at the time—touristy things, license plates from different states that I’d planned to do something crafty with but never did.

I sit down and pull out the items one by one, trying to invoke a memory, something to hold on to, but nothing comes. Not until I reach the bottom of the box and pull out a clear Ziplock bag with four tiny clay pots. Eyebrows drawn, I pull out the business card with the Eastwood Nursery logo and flip it over to read the handwritten note.

So you can take a piece of our legacy wherever you go. - Big H.

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