From Your Husband with Love

Sometimes I fuss (as you well know)
And even cuss (not often though)
Sometimes I preach but still it’s true
My favorite speech is I LOVE YOU!

It’s that time of the year … my wife’s birthday. Karen would have been 67 today.

Quite honestly, I didn’t know how to approach it this year any more than I have for the past six years. We never really “celebrated” birthdays, especially as we got older. It was just another day with “real life” stuff getting in the way. Sure, there were cards, and flowers {including this year} and presents. I would have made plans for a romantic dinner and perhaps a concert or football game.

And I would have told her a hundred times {okay, maybe not a hundred, but a lot} how much I loved her. Love, like in respect and appreciation and unfailing. I still do that even though our conversations are one-sided and through a bronze veil.

I was privileged to watch Karen grow up from an 18 year old siren to a strong, passionate, loving, caring, compassionate and grounded wife and mother {and grandmother}. That was the future I envisioned when I saw that scrawny girl way back when. I believed in her … and she believed in me.

Karen had an incredible passion for life, although her early experiences growing up often quelled that fire. She was realistic … I was the dreamer. She saw the glass half empty … I saw it half full. She was prone to worry … I was aloof.

It was precisely this disparity, I think, that made our marriage work. Very few times in our 40 years together were we both approaching life’s situations the same way … or as she was fond saying, “right brain … left brain.” It was Karen’s realism that tempered my dreams, just as much as it was my aloofness that quieted her fears. We never really decided whether the glass was half full or half empty. Instead we both became grateful we had a glass at all.

I wish things were different. I wish Karen was still here with me physically. I miss teasing her and being teased by her. I miss her smile and even her occasional grumpiness — especially in the dawn’s early light. But, it’s not. Life has a way of changing expectations.

We had a great ride. That’s why I can still say:

With all my love, Happy, Happy Birthday … For all our yesterdays … Today … and throughout Eternity.

I LOVE YOU!

THOUGHT TO REMEMBER: Encouragement and words of kindness are gifts you give that can be priceless, yet cost nothing.