After my wife Naima died suddenly, I found a tiny key taped to the back of our engagement photo. It opened a wooden box from her closet—inside were six letters and an envelope labeled “In case I go first.”
Her note began, “My love, I’m so sorry. Everything I did was because I loved you.”
The letters revealed a past love named Gibran who betrayed her, leaving her heartbroken and cautious. That’s when she met me—the “safe” choice. But she wrote, “I married you not because I settled, but because I finally knew what real love was.”
She confessed to private struggles: a tumor she beat alone, a brief encounter with Gibran years later, and secrets she kept to protect me. Her last letter said, “If I go first, let this box be the rest of me—the parts I was too scared to show.”
Later, Gibran reached out—sober, remorseful—and gave me a journal of Naima’s early poems. They inspired my own writing. I published The Locked Box, a small book about grief and love, donating the proceeds to a charity she supported.
Three years on, I still light her favorite candle each night. I’m seeing someone new, Salma, who once said, “You talk about Naima like she’s still shaping your life.”
“She is,” I told her. Because love like that never ends—it just keeps unfolding.
