October 22, 2019

 

My precious heart,

I call you this because you were the first lover to ever call me, ‘my precious heart’, and the words, so old-fashioned in a marvelous first days of love kind of way, so intimate, so kind, melted my heart and won me over.  Was it really so simple? It feels so. You like to tell the story of how you knew, the moment you saw my Plenty of Fish post, you loved me. My photo, you said, so shy, so intelligent, so everything you had ever wanted, and my description-- a woman who could write, express herself-- you were smitten.  

I was so naive back then.  A complete novice to the internet, and especially dating services.  Just there to make some friends. Most men wrote back without capital letters, punctuation, or even a  basic knowledge of grammar. I learned from my children this was the way it was done. I didn’t want that kind of man.  I wanted a man who could write. Who was well-read. Who was passionate. Kind. I didn’t care if he made me laugh. I cared if he made me want to laugh.

And then there was you.

You lied about your age.  You dropped five. I wouldn’t have minded if you had said you were ten years older than me right from the start, but I understand why you didn’t.  We were new to each other right then. And you so wanted us to work. My sweetest, dearest heart. We worked from the moment we began to write back and forth to each other.  We worked from our first phonecall, our first date, our first kiss, the first time we made love. We worked when our vulnerabilities were laid bare, and our hearts were sometimes stretched so thin we thought we would shatter into pieces.  We worked when I lay dying in a hospital bed and you cried out to my family you couldn’t live without me. We worked hard on my long road to recovery, and the redefinition of who we both were; separate, together, and both disabled. We worked, and we cried, we laughed, and we slept.  We ached, and ached, cursed and pled; with each other, within ourselves, with a universe so large our curses sped out at the speed of light and disappeared into a supernova billions of miles away, so insignificant, as we were finally to learn was the curse itself.  

So, my dearest sweetheart, I promised you I would write letters to you.  We practically live in each other’s laps in our tiny cottage home, finding our spots to camp out, close, but in our own worlds.  Twenty-four seven, seven days a week, 365 days a year give or take a few hours here and there, we are together. Most people say it would drive them crazy to live with their significant other so much, and maybe it’s true that if I hadn’t become disabled we would have said the same if we had met a couple such as we are now, would have pitied them, and felt secretly glad such a life wasn’t ours.  But here we are. HERE WE ARE. Your kiss still makes me dizzy. I am your precious heart. You are mine.  

 

Love Always