Love Waves

I believe that love hits space like radio waves.

The love of my parents is one frequency. They have a respectful and passionate love. It's a love that I've looked up to as an inspiration my whole life. They are patient and always considerate of one another. My dad tells my mother constantly that she gets more and more beautiful each day. He writes her love poems with rubber stamps and she decorates the mirror above her dresser with the collection. She has never once told him that he is a nauseating driver, she simply lets it be and trusts that she will arrive with her stomach whole. He gives her honest feedback about what he thinks of her outfits. She never lets him win at cards. They are supportive and active parents, working together to nurture children who treat themselves and others with respect and kindness. Their love is long-lasting, over thirty years and still growing. I imagine that my parents frequency of love soars high in the sky. It beams through the heavens alongside of other great loves.

Each partnership forms a distinct love wave. The love of my best friend, Aliyah, and her husband, Ben, is one. They are grounded in their love, they have much in common and are honest best friends to one another. The love of Natalia and Jaime is another frequency – a fresh love that is driven by spiritual growth and the throws of passion. The love of Lena and Corey is another. Their love began in middle school and continues to morph as they discover themselves – a love vested in common values, family, and tradition.

There are billions of different frequencies of love that broadcast through space with various rates. Some loves are high up in the heavens. Maybe these are the loves of great poets, spiritual love, and loves that are immortal. Maybe they are simply loves that just got it right. There are the loves that run closer to the earth, lower waves of love. Maybe these are animal partnerships, like two swans that mate for life because of evolution and survival. Maybe it's violent love that is not rooted in understanding, but instead in control. Maybe it's love between a girl with a broken heart and her dog, who has been there with her through it all because of an unexplainable bond and also a nylon leash.

The waves aren't necessarily a constant line. They can pulse, like an EKG reading if the relationship is tumultuous or driven by passion. They can angle up, like positive growth on the Cartesian Plane, if the love grows. They can fade off, like the hush at the end of a whisper, if the love dies.

I have tested my theory and discovered many of the waves of love I've cast out into the universe: some lower frequencies, mid-range frequencies, perhaps lustful higher frequencies that quickly disintegrate. But, I have only truly known physical love: such as the love that exists between a man and a woman, a woman and a woman who are also lovers, a pair of close friends, a boy and his pet. I have known love that dies – sometimes to a halting finish, sometimes to a low-level hush. I have known love that grows  – like a bond that is no longer romantic love but turns to a stronger connection in a platonic status, or a friendship that through trauma and pain changes into something more inescapably connected. I have known high frequency love – our love.

While I can't compare our love wave to other great loves (and don't want to), I know it was the strongest love I have felt. It was full acceptance. It was patience. It was excitement. It was trust. It was encouragement. It was devotion. It was growth. It was passion. But all of these words and emotions I use to describe our love exist mainly in physical-form. For instance, I can't trust you now in the way that I did when you were alive. I can't experience passion with you now, unfortunately. How can I encourage you, when I don't know what I'm encouraging or if I'm encouraging anything at all.

Where does the wave go when the man dies but the love doesn't?

Does it rise up? Does it descend? Does it disappear slowly? Is it already gone? Am I foolishly chasing imaginary stardust? Does it become divine love? Are you whizzing around my head like a hell-bent fly as my a guardian angel? Does it become universal love? Am I opening up to the love of nature and what is, because of what is no longer? I don't know.

I do know that no love wave is the same. I will never rebuild what we had. While I hope it is still there, beaming through the heavens as an example for others, I know I will never feel it in this body again. It has changed with grief. It has altered as it's been transferred to the unconscious. But what we had when you were alive will be there as a guide for me someday – when I decide I want to love again or when someone decides they want to love me and I let it in. But our wave of love is irreplaceable and unique, and I desperately miss it more and more with each of sorrowful breath.