I don't remember how our counselor got us talking. I don't remember the speech my fiance gave in response. I remember the silence.
The world was burning in that silence. It deafened my ears and flooded my eyes with tears that somehow couldn't spill over into the room. The silence pressed in to fill the vacuum that had been left by the most excruciating realization possible. It was over. The air was sucked out of the room. All the love and devotion that had been present in our lives was gone. All that was left was silence.
Just moments before we sat in the tan leather seats of his car, the world crashing in around us. This silence was everything but quiet. A thousand thoughts and emotions flooded in.
"I just think this is the end." His words fell like dead weight on my heart.
"Is that what you want?" I asked, already knowing the answer. He had decided all this before this conversation. And even though I could see the hesitation in his eyes, I knew his mind was made up.
He choked out the answer in a hoarse whisper.
"Yes."
"Okay, then."
What else can you say when the love of your life says they no longer want to be with you? What else can you say when the person you were going to marry decides life can and should continue on without you in it? What else can you say?
Resolved at my fate, I climbed from the car and walked toward the church. I was vaguely aware of his presence behind me as I entered the building and walked to our premarital counselor's office. I dully greeted our counselor, and the three of us sat in a circle facing one another. I sat dumbfounded, waiting for the next words to be spoken, waiting for the next actions to be taken, yet all around was the deafening silence.
Love can leave a void. Just as love had created such fullness and presence, it created an equally large vacuum. For three years I had experienced the heights, depths, length, and breadth of what love could be. I learned what it is to love another human being with all of me, and I learned what it meant for all of me to be loved. Those years came to a stunning halt in the silence of our premarital counselor's office. There was... there still is... a silence. A lack of words able to capture the emotion of watching future years of love slip out of your grasp.
The silence says it all.