Blog 2470 – 07.30.2022

Against All Odds

All love stories end in a sad good-bye for one or the other lover except for those few rare occasions when the couple dies together on the buddy-plan as in a automobile or plane crash or a Romeo and Juliet suicide pact. Even the movie version famed chick-flick, The Notebook, has the elderly life long lovers dying in each other arms in their sleep. This is a Hollywood screenwriter’s contrived happy ending. The Nicholas Spark book ending is a more traditional “ladies first”sad ending. But even then because of her Alzheimer’s the husband suffers a thousand and one terrible good-byes even in the movie version.

Today is my lovely and loving wife Linda’s seventy-second birthday. If we both live eleven days more we will celebrate thirty-three years together as man and wife. Like most married couples we have had our ups and downs, but I can honestly say that I love Linda more today than I did on our wedding day.

Early this year, the beginning of February, Linda had a mental break after a terrible bout of Shingles and for days she did not know who I was and it was sad and frightening for both of us. Linda’s dad passed away several years ago in his nineties and he had Alzheimers and was in a care facility the last several years of his life.

Linda who is like her dad in so many ways, is afraid she will be like him dad in that regard as well. After being checked out by two different hospitals and spending a couple of weeks in a Behavior Hospital between those two extensive check-ups and rounds of tests, I brought Linda home to care for her myself the best I can for as long as I can. I have told her my intention is to live at least one day longer than she does so I can be here to take care of her and so she will never have to say good-bye to me, but I to her.

My dad died of a heart attack or stroke three years before my mother took her own life with the Smith and Wesson light-weight revolver that he had bought for her for self-protection. She never forgave him for leaving her. They were married forty-seven years. Their marriages appeared from outside to be more holy deadlock than holy wedlock. She hated her life without him.

So many love songs lament the loss of the beloved. One on my favorites is a lesser known recording by Glen Campbell titled, The Last Time I Saw Her Face. Sad as I would be to sing that of my beloved wife Linda. I hope, against all odds, that she never has to spend one day grieving for me or in a place without me there beside her. I am trusting my infinite and loving source to make it so.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v7QcC5J4rsM05Eil1dkLaVkm0C0nNSk0/view?usp=drivesdk

The Last Time I Saw Her Face