Saturday Is Valentine's Day, So.......

....I'm going to share a few memories, and give a little bit of advice.

Valentines Day is supposed to be about Love. This year I want to take some time to ask that we all appreciate the love that we have, at this moment, right in front of us, today.

I consider myself an observer of the human condition. In recent weeks, an acquaintance of mine slipped on the ice and fell. He didn't want to admit he was hurt, but the pain became too much and finally he relented and allowed his wife to take him to the hospital.

An X-ray was taken, that showed something more than an injury. It showed a suspicious mass.
Procedures were done, and surgery scheduled. Then the bad news: CANCER. He now faces many months of chemo therapy, and fears for his job and livelihood.

But through all this, he has shut out his Wife, family, and friends, refusing to allow them to help him cope. The pain and anguish on his Wife's face as she tries to share her love and he denies it is painful to witness. I don't know what to say too him, to help him see what he is doing, and how counter productive it is. I have no room to talk, so I have stayed silent, and uninvolved.
So I'm going to relate my personal experience, from 17 years ago, and maybe he will read it, and understand.

I count myself incredibly lucky that I found the great love of my life, and have been married to her for over 12 years.

But seventeen years ago, I had a woman in my life that I never said the words "I love you" to.
We were very good friends, but I didn't have my act together enough at that time to see what was in front of me. In January of 1992, she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, and on Memorial Day, less than five months later she died, at the age of 27.

I've been working on this memoir about a dog I had in my life for 15 years, and how he acted as my best friend, but in writing this book, I realized, with the help of years of 20/20 hindsight, just what I had, and let get away.

On Easter Sunday before she died, I went to her home to visit. She was in the kitchen, sitting at the table reading, with the radio on.
We talked about many things, but we also argued, because she accepted that she had little time left, and I didn't want to hear that. Cross words were exchanged, and we fell into an awkward silence.

Then the song, "Dance With Me" by the group Orleans came on the radio, and she noted that in all our time together, I had never had occasion to ask her to dance.

"I would like to cross, "Dance with the man who loves me" off the list of things to do before I die", she said to me. I had never said that I loved her, so she said it for me.

I swallowed my words of despair, and got up from my chair. I went over to her, and lifted all 5 feet, and less than 90 pounds that was left of her from her treatments up, and slow danced her as carefully as I could around the kitchen until the song was done. I held her as gently as I could. When the song ended, we were both in tears, she kissed my cheek, and whispered "Thank You."

"Dance With me, I want to be your partner

can't you see, the music is just starting,

Night is calling, and I am falling, dance with me."

To this day, when I hear the guitar strings at the beginning of that song on the radio, I have to suppress an urge to cry. For the longest time, I have been successful, but in recent weeks, as I reexamined my past, not so much.

We don't know how long we have with the ones we love. Whether they will be here tomorrow, or we will, we don't know, but this year on Valentine's day, sometime Saturday in the evening, I don't know when, I'm going to ask the woman who loves me unconditionally, with all my faults, and all my annoying habits, to come out into the kitchen. I'm going to turn the XM radio on to either the 70s on XM 7, or Love songs on Channel XM 23, and ask her to dance with me.

I'm going to let her know that I appreciate and treasure the love that we have for each other, right then, now, and in the future. I would hope that all of you out there will take the initiative, and grab that significant other in your life sometime Saturday, and do the same. Before it is too late.

Just walk over and ask them, "will you....

Dance With Me?"