It doesn’t seem possible that my dad could be gone 16 years already. But every year, as Valentine’s Day rolls around, I am reminded of the last Valentine’s Day we spent together, him in a Hospice bed, me in tears hoping that he could at least sense how much I loved him. He would die the next day, and forever change Valentine’s Day, and so much more, for me.
I was reminded again of what he meant to me when I read a quote from Paul Gallico, who wrote the American classic, The Snow Goose. I don’t know which of his dozens of books this quote came from, or what the context was, husband and wife, lovers, or maybe friends, but his words moved me to tears.
“When two people loved each other they worked together always, two against the world, a little company. Joy was shared, trouble split. You had an ally, somewhere, who was helping.”
I guess the quote spoke to me, not only of what is ours when we are loved, but what we don’t have when love is no more—no matter what the reason. It is the aloneness of grief, the realization that you are a company of one.
Thank God, for time.
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