Beloved,

Today I turned 78 and I’m wondering where all the years have gone. They seem to have flown by so quickly. Without you, life seems so out of humor. We laugh, but there is no echo of the laughter we wait for. But I remember! And this is for all those who remember love!

Yes, I remember.

I remember the first time I saw you. You had on that ridiculous cowboy hat and that plaid jacket with the leather laces. How you loved that jacket! Years later, it was that same old jacket the family found me crying into after I said goodbye to you at the station on your way to war. I thought my heart would stop beating from the pain. But like all the other waiting wives, I filled the hours with work, family and my victory garden. I can tell you, that was one sorry looking garden, never having done one before.

I remember the things I loved about you, and there were many—your crazy sense of humor, your determination to go where no man had gone before. Sometimes the results were disastrous. Like the time we had our picnic lunch in the car, in the middle of the river with water swirling over the floor boards because you thought you would drive out to the little island there. The water didn’t look deep, you said. We didn’t make it, did we? It was hilarious!

I loved your gentleness and your understanding my need to be alone on the beach sometimes, just to sit and watch the waves. You would take me, then sit in the car and sleep until I was ready to come back. How I loved you for that. Then there were the times we would get up at 2 or 3 A.M. and drive into San Francisco just to get a burger. Or our first New Years celebration after the war—you kept filling my glass with champagne, which I had never had before. You got me tipsy! Wretch! But you took me home before I started dancing on the tables and disgraced myself. You poured me into bed and gave me something to take away my hangover, so all was forgiven.

I loved our trips to Death Valley and our trips to the mountains. Most of all I loved you because you were you. Wonderful! Crazy! Taking chances, what fun! But then you became ill. The doctors said they couldn’t do anything more. Life wasn’t much fun any more, was it? Those years were the bad times. And suddenly you were gone and I was alone. For a while, I lied to myself, telling myself you were just away on a trip—that you would be home soon. So I left the hall light on at night for you because I didn’t want you to come home to a dark house. After a while, though, I turned it off because I knew in my heart that never again would the back door bang open and the cheery voice call out, honey I’m home!

Wish you were here!