Memories of Love

In thinking about Josette Delacore, I find myself wondering, do I still love her or is it the memory of her that I love? Forgive me. I must admit that at times, my memories of her and of us sustain me and at other times they hurt so much. I know our love is no more. She has been dead for centuries now and yet when I look back, she was the one. Our love existed once, in a place long gone. A place that lives only in my memories, along with her. I am not the same man I was then; a newly made blood sucker who saw her one summer night on the Pont-Neuf walking with another immortal, a vampire I hated even before I fell in love with Josette and stole her from him.

But I digress.

I was thinking about memory and how it can be both a blessing and a curse, even for a vampire. Though we do not physically age, we must grow and change or die. How we achieve this is something Michel and I have debated on more than one occasion. How we both choose to move through times is also very personal to each of us. I can no more be the mortal I was at twenty, or the vampire I was in the eighteenth century. We all must change and adapt. Nothing stays the same; no one and no place can remain constant. The universe does not work this way. Trust me. We are fools to think that what was will always be.

Time separates us immortals from all of you humans. It changes, alters, reshapes, whatever word you choose...time re- sculpts each of us like a potter holding a brick of wet clay in his bare hands. When the world shifts and becomes unrecognizable, our memories are the glue that holds all the pieces of us together. I suppose in that regard, all of us are equals. Love is love and loss is loss. I suppose it is what we choose to hold onto that saves us, which memories will redeem us and make us smile, despite the chasm of time.

Once Michel and I were in Barnes and Noble and he picked up a book of quotes and began to read them randomly. When he got to "it's never too late to have a happy childhood" he had to put the book down he was laughing so hard, but it made me think about my own life and how much I hated what I had chosen to become: a vampire. Maybe I was looking at it all wrong and so I have tried to view my death and rebirth through a new lens, one of joy and not pain. Funny, but it seems to have helped, but these memories of love still haunt me. I haven't been able to find a suitable quote to ease the pain of it, though I keep looking.

Christian