Sharon, A Departed Spouse

I thank you for orchestrating the best 35 years of my life. 

Our love was not a separate part of our lives

You were more than just my best friend.

It was what our lives were all about.

Rest in peace, my sweetheart, 

You were and will always be

 beloved by me 

And the ones that

 You showed what real love was,

The family.

The New Path  

You asked if I ever think of her,

I answered, “of course I do.”

My mind wanders back to my past,

Where memories that are buried seem to last.

But worry not, my dear sweet lady.

For when I think of the present, I think only of you.

My reflections are both happy and sad.

A wonderful life together

That ended too soon.

I held her hand for hours.

Until her last breath, her soul left the room.

How could I not remember her?

She was the core of my life.

For thirty-five years

She was both my lover and my wife.

But she is gone and no longer exists.

She said to me before she left

On this one thing I must insist,

Your life must continue forward

Grief must not stop you

Don’t fall behind; you must resist.

Love is everywhere; if you look, you will find.

Life alone is not meant to be.

Find someone who is not like me.

Your memory will last, but I represent the past,

You’re on a new road now,

New faces, new places, new fields to plow.

Now, sweet lady, I am with you

And all she said has come true.

Mine is a new life, we’ll call it Act III.

And we will explore it together,

Just you and me.

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What Does It Mean When You Say You Love Someone?

I have written about love in some of my other books; what I said in them
was what I believed to be true, and I still do. Love’s definition, like
everything else in my life, has matured with age. I have called it a concept,
and it is how we use it in English. What, then, is the definition of it? Now, at
age 91 years, I have more to say about what the word love means to me.
All my life, I have taken the word and broken it up into parts.
An example would be telling my wife, ‘I love you,’ then asking, ‘What are we
having for lunch? I love lunch; it’s my favorite meal.’ Does the word love
change its meaning? It must; you don’t love your wife the same way you
love your lunch. I would fight to protect my wife from someone who was
going to hurt her; I don’t care if I miss lunch. Why do we use the same
word? When we talk about lunch, we can use many different words, such
as appreciate, enjoy, or wish for, among others; however, when it comes to
our wives, the word ‘love’ is the only one that seems to fit. Why?
What does it mean that most other words wouldn’t convey? I have thought
about this a lot. What does it truly mean to love?
Love is like a puppy, cuddly and fun, and just like a puppy, it will grow much
stronger if it is well cared for; and you can have it at any age. It is up to you.
A baby loves its parents because it depends on them for care. That is the
only thing it understands about them. Young people love each other
because of the passion and innocence of youth in real life. There are many
personal qualities hidden within the word love, and it is used to mask them
so they can enter our lives.
A few of these include control over someone, dependency on someone,
sex and lust, and finally, security. Because there are so many reasons that
make us think we are in love, it is easy for us to make mistakes and realize
this later.
We say, “I don’t love you anymore. If that happens to you, it is
because you only love a person because they seemed to fit into your world
at the time.
True love can’t be broken up into parts. Love can be explained in one word:
it does not take more than that. What is the word? If you have ever had a dog that you loved, and he or she loved you too, you have experienced true
love. The dog doesn’t care what you do. It still loves you.
The only word I can think of that describes what true love is made of is
acceptance. You must fully accept what you say you love and not try to
change it. If you try to change it, then you don’t truly love it. You only love
certain parts of it. It’s challenging to love only parts of something and not
the whole. This also applies to people. It’s easy to find someone you love in
parts, but hard to find someone you love completely. That’s why people
often say, “I don’t love you anymore.” In a long relationship, you might find
parts you no longer love.
Love is a fantastic quality in life, but it must be an act of total acceptance to
be long-lasting. (See the poem “Home”.) Be a flower, it gives beauty and
asks nothing in return. It accepts you accepting it for what it is, nothing more.