Anyway, my wife has virtually no sense of smell so she cannot tell that the house smells like a kennel and a cattery combined. I love that she has no sense of smell. It’s a symbol of how unsuspicious, non-judgmental, totally accepting she is in everything. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, “she knows too much to argue or to judge.”
In a few days, if all is well, it will be my wife and my 40th valentine’s day together, and she’ll probably spend it rescuing animals before we go out to dinner.
In other words, she’s a saint.
But we’re not young. I keep wondering how long until one or the other of us has to spend Valentine’s Day without the other. That thought scares me. I don’t know how people do it when they’ve been together for decades and then are suddenly alone. I cannot imagine their pain and their loneliness, although I did see it up close and personal when my mother died leaving my father–who had never even looked at another woman–alone after sixty-one years. He suffered horribly.
On this Valentine’s day, let’s spare a thought, a moment, a call, a visit, for parents, friends, who are without those they loved, those they still love. And most of all for those of us who still have the love of our lives in our lives, let’s be deeply grateful. Love may be eternal, but we are not, and let’s be grateful for the love we have while we can still see her in our homes and hold her in our arms. It is later than any of us dare think. And let’s vow to never, ever fight with those we love. Not over anything.