Then I took my daughter, who is visiting me for the week, to have dinner with some family members here in Arizona. One was missing. My first cousin (more like my sister) lost her husband a few months ago after a very long and anguished battle. We looked at old photos and remembered better times. At the end of the evening, my daughter hugged my tearful cousin and said, "It will be alright.........I love you."
This is the daughter I raised and nurtured into the miraculous young woman she has become. On the drive back to my place, she said, "Dad, I love you." We sat down to find a movie before bed and landed on, "Funny People." Adam Sandler plays a comic dying from a form of leukemia. We changed to Saturday Night Live quickly in time to find Paul Simon.
Now I am back in my room, writing these thoughts, but remembering the song that came on in the movie, just as we knew to change the channel. So I will say this for whatever it is worth and whoever may stumble across this blog tonight. Let's call it an epilogue to my previous post, "Driving without music." It's been a week and already what we had, the best of times, are slowing fading into oblivion. As much as I need to tell someone about this night, tell her, or who I thought she was, or maybe who I just wanted her to be, I can't, even though it might make her feel good that lovers can later be friends and share these things, these feelings; because I don't believe that for a minute. If you become friends, you were never really lovers in the first place. Maybe this is where all the time goes.
Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath, keep me in your heart for awhile. If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less, keep me in your heart for awhile.
