“Forever is quite a long time, isn’t it? But it won’t stop me from loving you.”

That was the time I confessed to her. It was on a night when we finally had a decent talk about me and her, about us. She gave me a big bouquet of lilies, roses and sunflowers, my favorite. It was a quiet Valentine’s Day, but it was a memorable one. Ever since then, we stuck together like leeches, growing in love day by day.

We weren’t allowed to get married, since our country’s quite homophobic. Society defied us, but we defied odds. People would try to bring us down, telling us that we wouldn’t last. They kept insulting us, bad mouthing us behind our backs. At first, it was a big deal. Who wouldn’t be bothered by rude comments on a mere act of holding hands or smiling together? Is falling in love a bad thing these days? But as time passed, we realized, it didn’t really matter much what other people thought about us. We learned to get pass through it, and build a wall against them. We let them be, it’s their loss anyway. We’re not doing anything wrong.

Well, making a child is impossible for us because well, we’re both female. Buying a puppy was our first step towards parenthood. Loving a puppy was great, but a child was still better. We resorted to adoption, and it was the best decision of our lives. No regrets, definitely. We named him Kyungsan and he was the most precious thing in the world.

Kyungsan’s in kindergarten now and I’m a full-time mom until he gets to middle school. We were able to save some money that would last us a long time. I’ve temporarily resigned from my job as an interior designer; I let my friends run the office for a while. I trust them enough to handle the business very well.

It’s been 3 months since she passed away, and it’s the first Valentine’s Day I’m spending alone. I’ve been past the depressed state, but I randomly cry sometime. Don’t tell my son I told you that, he hates it when I cry. He cups my face and tells me to stop. No matter how comforting that may sound, it makes me cry harder because that was the same way she’d do it if she saw me crying.

Today, I drove Kyungsan to school, waited for him, and then we went home afterwards for lunch. As I reached our doorstep, hand in hand with Kyungsan, I saw a delivery boy at our gate. He had a gorgeous bouquet addressed to me.. from her. Confused and and heartbroken, I called up the florist and complained that there had been a mistake. After I vented out all my feelings, the florist waited for me calm down until she replied, “No, ma’am. There wasn’t a mistake. Before she passed away, she paid us in advance for many years and asked us to guarantee that not a Valentine’s Day would pass by without you having a bouquet in your arms.”

Choking back tears, I hung up the phone and read the attached card.

“Forever is quite a long time, isn’t it? I won’t stop loving you too.”