I sat in a movie theater in Linden, New Jersey one August afternoon in 2016. The film was Suicide Squad. Lesley Gore’s You Don’t Own Me cues up, Margot Robbie’s character, Harley Quinn, appears on screen. I begin to sob. She hated going to the movies but wanted to see this one. Harley Quinn was her favorite character from comics. You Don’t Own Me could have been Melissa’s mantra in song form. But she wasn’t here by my side to see it with me. She died a week earlier.

I dread August 1st. This will be the second one since she’s passed and while many things get easier as time goes by, this day will always be this day. The day haunts me, but the truth is that every day haunts me. I like to say that we weren’t put here to write our own life stories. We don’t have final edit on the script. We are merely audience participants in the improvised tragedy that we call life. I couldn’t have written this one if I tried.

Our first date is chiseled into the granite of my mind. After talking on the phone for weeks I finally get to see her for the first time in over a decade. Yeah, we had some kind of history having been classmates in all throughout adolescence. She answers the door and she’s even more beautiful than I ever remember. I could sense my childhood stutter about to return. I’m exaggerating, I did fine. We got sushi, then coffee, then she invited me back to her place. She fired up her Super Nintendo and summarily handed me my ass in Mortal Kombat II. A mutual love of old video games was one of the things that got us talking in the first place. And then she leaned in and kissed me. My god, those lips.

Kissing would be the last thing we’d ever do, some ten months later. I’d visit her at the hospital on the evening of July 31st, 2016. After a tumultuous couple of months we found ourselves together, in Robert Wood Johnson Medical Center, talking about our future. For the first time I could see a future with her that I was certain I wanted. I loved her. I was finally sure. We said goodbye. I kissed her goodbye. Those lips.

The next day she was dead.

I drive home from the hospital that August afternoon, chainsmoking. I sit alone with my thoughts for a few hours. I call my oldest sister knowing she wouldn’t be at work or anything like anyone else I could have called. My mom comes home. I tell her. We collapse into each other’s arms. Earlier that day, at the hospital, I was allowed in to see her, Melissa, my girl. Somehow, even with her body robbed of all life, no longer possessing that unique soul I’d grown accustomed to, she looked beautiful lying there. At peace. Any pain no longer being felt. This did little to provide solace in the moment. If there is a God, and because of this experience I’m not entirely sure that there is, he heard every god damned word I had for him. So did the rest of the heavens. And so did anyone within a half a mile radius. What kind of fucking plan was this?

From their seminal album, Throwing Copper, Live’s All Over You has begun to play on repeat in my mind. At some point she had decided that it was to be considered our song. I mostly hate grunge music but I went along with this. Listening to lyrics, I begin to realize that she cherished me in ways I never realized, in ways perhaps she couldn’t express herself. She was more deep than anyone ever gave her credit for. She was right, our love is like water.

Later that evening I returned to her apartment, taking anything of any importance to me, anything I feel like she’d be ok with me having. She had no will. Yeah, I took that Super Nintendo. I keep it in a big old wooden chest that she’s restored. The next day I’d go back for her three cats Mittens, Puma, and Lacey. I don’t keep them in the chest though, they get to roam the house, much to my cat Columbo’s chagrin. She never got to have children. Maybe I never will either. But I have her cats. I love them as much as one can love an animal. Maybe somehow I love them even more because they were hers.

And so the rest of my life began. It blurred a lot but memories stand out. I’d go shooting with friends at an outdoor gun range. I don’t own any myself but I do like handling one on occasion. Not an easy thing to admit in times of such pronounced violence. I stood there, AR-15 in hands, quite literally throwing copper. For me the catharsis lies not in the wielding of such power but in taking aim at the target, pulling the trigger, and making the mark. This would come to be a metaphor on how I learned to start living again. I haven’t gone shooting again and don’t really care if I do again. However, if I was going to continue onward I’d eventually have to target the things in life that I wanted, throw some figurative copper at them and hope to make my mark.

I’ve been dating for the last year. Recently it was suggested to me that I don’t even mention Melissa to anyone, the idea being that as soon as I do they’ll think that I’m still not over her.

I’ve got something to tell you.

You never get over it. You add a room to the home that exists within your heart and that shit stays there even when they die. All that fills the room doesn’t just dissipate into the aether. It remains everlasting, tasking you with the challenge in how to proceed onward with it rather than moving on with out it. And when you find someone else you just build a new room, that other one is still occupied.

I struggle with the search for meaning in all of this. Maybe she needed me to help usher her off into her next phase of existence. Maybe I needed her in order to grow in ways I never would have otherwise. I can’t say I know for sure but I do know something:

For whatever reason, she chose me as her target. She threw her copper. I stand here today a more complete person because of it. She made her mark.