Tears

Tears

Knowing in my heart

Wanting something

That I cannot have

But not giving up hope

I see you when I can

Then I suffer when you go

I curl up, sometimes

I think it’s just not worth it

But then I think of your soft cheek

And my hand in yours

The little grin that covers your face

And brightens my world

And I just can’t seem to let go

Of the dream

Am I just a dreamer?

Someone who will hang on

When it seems pointless

To everyone else around me?

“I was only 18”

I tell myself

That I really wasn’t able to

Know or understand

The meaning of the word

Compatibility

I spent twenty years

Telling myself that the love I felt

Was just something I created

To cover up the emptiness.

Then, late one night

When my kids were asleep,

You called me and asked if you could see me.

I didn’t understand what you wanted

Or what you expected.

When I asked you why you wanted to come

Your answer surprised me.

"I wanna hold your hand

And look in your eyes,

And tell you something

Ask you something,

If you’ll let me."

Two hours later

I saw your black truck pull into my driveway.

My heart, so full of love, ready to spill out

On my kitchen floor,

That I just stood at the door,

Not knowing what to say

Or do,

Or believe,

Or think.

You came walking towards me

And I started to shake.

Tears couldn’t be pressed in.

I had waited for this moment

My whole life.

And now it was here.

And I didn’t know what to say

To the man, the love of my life.

“Welcome home” I heard myself say.

It just came out of me

Without thought.

You embraced me at the door.

My soul soared.

You picked me up,

Carried me across the threshold

Across my green seventies

Linoleum floor,

That suddenly looked like the kitchen

I was supposed to have

When you walked in my home.

It showed you who I am

And where I’d been.

I’m not a fancy lady

I’m just a simple woman

With simple dreams

And wishing that a simple man

Would walk into my life.

We sat on my blue worn out sofa.

You held my  hand between both of yours.

Then your eyes filled with tears even before you

Spoke.

“Kathy, I want you to be with me when I am

Dying.

If I get sick, I want to ask my oldest son to come for you,

To find you, so that you can be beside me

When I cross over.”

I felt my soul moving to that place

Holding his hand, smoothing his forehead

With my hand, comforting him,

As he sailed out of his body.

“would you come, if I called you?”

The earth, in that moment,

Seemed so very small, and I felt

Even smaller, maybe because

I sensed

The magnitude of what he was asking me.

“Of course I’d come. I’d come as quickly as I could.”

Now, three months later, I realized what he was asking me.

In fact, as I am writing this, Just two paragraphs ago,

I realized, that this question was the one I had been waiting to hear my whole life.

I used to think that a man getting on his knee, and opening a box

Was the way a woman was going to be asked to join her soul with another.

But that is only half of the question, that is the easy part.

Will you love me when it is not easy?

Will you hold my arm, to keep me steady

As I shuffle to the bathroom?

Will you blend my food when I am too weak to chew it?

Will you help me get to the porch so I can look at the flowers

That I planted years ago?

Will you lift the wheelchair into the car

And take me for a drive to see the beautiful leaves

In the fall?