a cross that i can bear?

This is the first summer in many years that I have left my NY home for more than 3 weeks of away time.  What hasn't changed, however, is the destination of this yearly vacation: Austria - the place where I grew up.

Since my arrival here a few weeks ago, I haven't shed daily tears as I have at home. I suppose, it's because this place  fosters no associations to J and is full with childhood memories everywhere I look.

This is pre-relationship territory so-to-say because, believe it or not, I despised the idea of a boyfriend when I was in my teens. I found relationships restrictive and annoying, at least from where I was standing. I loved hanging out with my friends and the few times I let a boy come close, I felt suffocated by the constant need of said boy to hold hands or claim any part of my time for himself.

I guess, my former self would have never understood my later capacity and desire to be glued to this love of mine for 24 hours a day (if it would have been possible, that is).

Yesterday, as I sat outside in my father's garden, the tears came to find me despite my recent and unexpected emotional escape. I don't know what triggered the thought but I was suddenly reminded that J wasn't just far away - across the ocean - in New York. He was dead. He died!! It's real. And then I thought of his face in the open casket and then I was done. I couldn't hold my tears. As if to stop me before I lost it completely, a line in the song playing gently on the radio next to me spoke: "Don't you worry....time will heal all wounds, " it said and then continued: "...all your life has led up to this.." or something like that, which - I suppose - could mean that I have been prepared for this fate of mine. Subtly maybe - but prepared, nonetheless. In other words possibly then (and I paraphrase): "God will only give you a cross as heavy to bear as you can handle." ...