Reflections on a Marriage

12/3/08

Philip Birmingham

   On January 1^st, 2009, she will have been gone three years.  I reflect every day on our fifty-three years together.  The early ones were lust and laughter, raising a family, arguments great and small over every conceivable subject and finally, after enough years went by, the acceptance of each other as we were.  In the later years, most especially now, I think of how careless and thoughtless I sometimes was.  I could have been a better father, a better husband, and a better friend, and I so wish I could do it all over again, but I cannot.  The realization that she was my soul-mate and the best friend I would ever have in my life finally occurred to me, but not as an epiphany.  It came smiling at me, gradually and gracefully, as time went on.  Now that I have ample leisure to reflect on my life, many small remembrances of her sough through my memories every day.  Our last years were filled with tolerance and mutual respect, and we would often bend to plant a small kiss on the other’s cheek or neck.  Sometimes it would come as a surprise from behind, yet other times face to face.  On those times when I would sense it coming, and in that microsecond before her lips touched my cheek, I would think what motivated her to kiss me, and so bid this old man well.  Those thoughts always flew straight to my heart, where they all now comfortably reside.  I daydream a great deal now, and sometimes picture her healthy and happy, and observing me from another plane of existence.  And in those sometimes I swear I can feel her touch me, then bend to me, and then that kiss.