Blog 2524 – 09.23.2022
Saved The Best For Last
On this passed August tenth my wife and I marked our thirty-third wedding anniversary. They say a couple who has been together as long as we have even begins to look alike. Linda and I have a lot in common:
We were both born in 1950
Both raised in southern states (She, South Carolina, I, Tennessee)
Both hold strong opinions that we are ever ready to defend
Both hard-headed, but also tender-hearted.
Both spent a lot of years looking for love and believe we found it in each other in the Nick of Time.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FXZdG_yZ6hNw7Ct0gZGV9C8ezca0-2Ba/view?usp=drivesdk
Nick Of Time
Linda always loved the poem, “Come grow old with me, the best is yet to be.” I have only come to appreciate that sentiment in the last couple of years. Growing old has never been high on my bucket list, nor saying good-byes to friends and loved ones. Yesterday I received word that a long time neighbor boy from my youth passed away. Wayne Brown was sixty-eight. I can still hear his mother hollering for him and his brother Hollis as my mom did for my brother Robert and me at supper time. The rule was we could play outside till dark, but we always had to stay within shouting distance. And those two women could be heard for six or eight blocks in all directions, Nancy Brown for perhaps several more.
Since February I have been aware that Linda is wandering further and further away in her mind. When she is not walking like a sentry on guard duty she sits and just stares for hours on end. Often when I check on her she is weeping and cannot or will not tell me why. Uncharacteristically she is cleaning house, letting go of things, things she once thought too precious to part with. She grabs my hand, hugs me, and kisses me far more frequently than she ever did before. She is perhaps saying her good-byes while she still can.
Some time ago in this blog I shared an old joke that I first heard in high school over fifty years ago. It came from the comedy duo of Allen and Rossi:
“Why are you crying?
I met a girl.
Tell me about her.
She looks like an angel, walks like and angel, talks like an angel.
What happened?
She flew away.”
The trip to Paris that we have planned and saved for may have to be put on hold for another lifetime. Sometime when we go for our morning walks in a nearby park, I wonder if it will be our last. There is a little girl not quite two there with her Nanny most mornings. We always wave to her, her Nanny waves back and tries to get the little girl to wave. She is holding out, saving the best for last perhaps.
Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White
Saved The Best For Last
theencouragingword 