PARTING THOUGHTS

                                                

On Saturday the 28^th of April we would have been married fifty years. It was a day she was so looking forward to because she always remembered a few relatives who told us we were too young and it would never last. That we were a couple of snot nosed kids who had no idea what we were getting into and didn’t understand what true love was all about. Those who said that are all gone now too, so there would have been no victory toast to relish. No crow to eat and no one to wink at and say “I told you so.” For me the satisfaction of still having her would have far out weighed anything else vindictive. We didn’t get married to win a contest, we married because kids, or not, we just enjoyed each other so much and that enjoyment never stopped.

It’s so different now that she is gone. I’m getting used to living alone but one thing that does bother me is when I see other older couples still enjoying each other’s company. I never had the “why me,” syndrome after she died but it does get me into a pity mood sometimes when that happens. I guess its human nature to be envious.

My wife was fun loving and gregarious and the last thing she would have wanted was for me to be moping around the rest of my life. If she could text me right now she would say “Suck it up Mike. But behave yourself.” There was a time when I would wake in the morning and think, “I would trade my tomorrow’s for those yesterdays in a New York minute but I know now that life isn’t about tomorrow’s or yesterdays but it is a trail of now’s and that’s what I need to be thinking about.

I have gone to a lot of weddings over the years and heard so many times the song Endless Love being sung. Not always like Diana Ross and Lionel Richie sang it-- but it’s the title of the song I wanted to talk about and not how it was sung. I have found out what endless love really means in the last few months. It’s a love that doesn’t go away even when physically there is no one here to love. Can it be replaced? Maybe, I’m not sure. Not sure because first of all you would have to want it to be replaced and then the answer to the question, can it be replaced, might be more obvious. But maybe replaced is a bad choice of words and it’s not another chapter in the same book but a whole new story. Time will tell I guess.

The other day I was sorting through the freezer when I came across a loaf of frozen pumpkin bread. There were so many people who gave me food after she passed and I froze a lot of stuff. But as I looked at the freezer bag, there was writing on it and it was hers. She had baked it a month before she died. I could only stare at it because here was something she had prepared for me to eat. I plan to have a piece of that bread on the 28^th. I will go to the grave with some flowers and that bread and we will celebrate together our anniversary. It won’t be the party I had planed, but there will be a party.