After Forty Years

(Soon to be 41)

To you my love:
If Apples were pears, and peaches were plums,
And roses had a different name;
If tigers were bears, and fingers were thumbs,
I'd still love you just the same.

And, unlike like Tapol in the "Fiddler", I need not ask "Do you love me?" For you have shown me in so many ways. Your commitment to our relationship has been unconditional. So many times that I can't count the ways. How can I begin to tell you the depth of my feelings? I know it is there because of the lump that grows in my throat when I try. So here's to all the times we have had and more to come:

• And here it is 2010; so we continue to continue. The trip to Rock Falls to visit our friend Phil with his bone cancer was necessary. You remained the source of inspiration and information. Wine tasting and a pin for my hat when we visited the Ronald Reagan home in Dixon. Unfortunately it was so hot the evening was cut short. The White Pines Restaurant & cottages were interesting but the cap was the evening seminar from TNC Fitness by Bryan Frederick to help with a new method of calorie counting and weight loss to control my current diabetes diagnosis. What is next?
• The Bell of Cincinnati was exciting. Then dinner at Montgomery Inn Boat House for our 40th capped the year 2009. And now, another year has begun in your loving care. Compression socks on my legs every morning and removal every night brings pain to your arthritic hands, yet you continue. It was November when I started the nose bleeds (dry air, Oxygen and Aspirin was the cause the ENT said when he cauterized the bleeders). Tripping over the O2 hose didn't help either. I was sore for a month. And yet through it all you carried on.
• A year of recovery in 09. The exercising twice a week you financed at FT (Fitness Together) is showing the promise that I can soon be off the Oxygen during the day. Night time still requires the BI-pap machine but without your insistence and help I would not have made such progress. And so, I can look forward to our all-day trip up river in October on the Bell of Cincinnati (the DQ is a museum in Tennessee)
• And now the end is near; when I faced that final curtain in April of 08, you received the 911 call from the sleep clinic and rallied to my aid. They could not wake me and were sending me to Jewish Hospital. I was blue and barely breathing. The ER doctor assumed "Heart Attack" which was not the case. The obstructive sleep apnea, the smoking and the Navy asbestos had taken their toll and I was diagnosed with COPD. After 2 weeks I came home with oxygen and a hose in my nose. So much for your retirement plans you started in February. But you still managed to help me achieve my goal to go to Superior in July of 08 and attend the 35th AMSOIL convention. Two weeks on the road with oxygen was a tribute to your tenacity and unspoken love.
• My 75th birthday in August at Mike's will be cherished in my memory for years to come. So many of my friends showed to wish us well. Thank you again for the arrangements.
• Our 35 anniversary trip to Bardstown Ky and the dinner train before your surgery in January 2005.
• Our 2003 birthday trip to see our friends in Alaska and the photo's of this "Fading Frontier"
• Our celebrated 30 th anniversary in Hawaii on December 5th 2000.
• Our 25 anniversary in New Orleans where we renewed our wedding vows on the Delta Queen.
• Our anniversary trip to England to visit our friends in Cornwall and Kent plus the historic places in London and Windsor.
• The Landmark Forum in 1995 to clear my mind and help me get back on track. (Although I suspect an ulterior motive, it makes me smile and love you more). You have always done for others, books for reference, food recipes, home remedies, and techniques; always sharing your knowledge in such a unique care-giving way that you are often misunderstood. I know I love you for these ways because I hurt when you hurt and I feel anger when you are misunderstood.
• The renewed trust when you felt the pain in 71 when I failed to share the loss of my job at Allis-Chalmers for the weekend. My intentions were good but my method was lousy. Forgive me. . . . .

I further thank you for just being you and I continue to thank you for:

­ allowing me to share in the raising of your sons as my own when mine were taken from me by a debilitating divorce and allowing me to nurture them with you till they have reached their 30's and now call me "DAD".

­ supporting our relationship and the financial efforts when mine were lacking. I have tried to be a good provider but life happens and turns things around. You carried the ball and sacrificed so much with your time and your energy over the years. And even now as you approach retirement you continue to concern yourself with our financial well being.

­ continuing to continue through the hard times of having a full time job, attending night college, being a mother to the boys, my companion, raising a stepson in his teenage years, supporting your own live-in mother and her loss. You have pushed and stabilized this relationship almost to the point of injuring your health. I feel ashamed and yet awed by your tenacity to remain with me. Thank you.

I am truly a lucky man to have your friendship and love. I find it difficult to express these feelings as I am sure you know. Perhaps this simple acknowledgement of them will do:

To you my love, my steadfast companion, and life-long friend I pledge a better commitment, a renewed faith in our future togetherness and a golden time for living in these "October, November, and December" years.

We were told to asks for something bigger than big at the seminar tonight. There is no further need in my life. When I have you by my side, I have it all (winning the lottery or the power ball would be no good without you).

Your Nanuk