Heart Shaped Year - Rebecca Graham

My 2020 took the shape of a heart. Specifically, a delicate silver heart dotted with shining zirconia that I have worn around my neck for the past two hundred and seventy-one days. I unwrapped the delicate pendant to the sound of my mother’s slightly muffled voice asking if I liked my birthday present. After our call, where we spoke of everything we would make and watch and do when we were together again, I decided that I would wear the heart until we were reunited.

I was wearing the heart when my sister tearfully told me that my first love had died in a house fire.

I was wearing the heart as I watched a man’s life be crushed from his chest by a heinous knee to the throat.

I was wearing the heart as I stood in a crowded market, listening to my mother tell me that my aunt had died suddenly from a blood clot to the lung.

I was wearing the heart as I watched a heartless orange man lie his way through the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and again as he threatened the very nature of democracy itself.

I was wearing the heart when my mother told me that my nonna is in the early stages of dementia.

But.

I was wearing the heart when I opened the Superman statue my sister had sent as her way of helping me to heal from my first love’s death.

I was wearing the heart as I saw thousands and thousands of people march for justice in the name of those who had lost their lives to inexcusable prejudice.

I was wearing the heart when my partner sat with me on our tiny couch as we watched my aunt’s farewell 1,700 kilometres away.

I was wearing the heart when it was announced that the heartless orange man would not be allowed to continue his reign of fear, deception, and hatred.

I was wearing the heart when I started learning Italian again, the language of my nonna’s family.

I was wearing the heart when I embraced my family for the first time in months.

I was wearing the heart during my first dinner with old friends.

I was wearing the heart as I watched one of my best friends marry her best friend on her parents’ back deck.

My 2020 took the shape of a heart. Sometimes battered, bruised, and broken but always filled with the love I have for others and that others have shown to me.