I Couldn't Have Done It Without You!

 To Andrew

As a small girl, I already knew

(from instinct or indoctrination, who cares?)

the thing I wanted most in my life

was to experience love – to be loved, I meant, 

but was smart enough, even then, to know, 

the only way would be to love. To give it.

So I set about becoming Love. And on the way

I learned the many forms of love, the great

varieties: family, friendships, pets; trees and

rivers and mountains and the sea; foreign

cultures wiser and kinder than my own; places

of transcendent beauty; motherhood; even God …

But I’d meant, above all, romantic love. To learn

the all of that, I needed (I should have realised) 

many romances: the youthful, the unrequited, the false; 

break-ups, betrayals, heartbreak, loss … as well as 

the enduring, the joyful, the true … marriages,

divorces, lovers, infidelities (theirs and mine) …

Eventually, newly single in my mid-fifties,

imagining I’d have to be alone the rest of my life,

I encountered a deliciously attractive, 

mentally compatible younger man, and yes,

on offer, drawn to me too. But he wasn’t yet 

looking for permanence. And I was done

with sad endings, with a torn heart, with mixed

pleasures and regrets. ‘Next time,’ I said to the Universe, 

‘I want a happy love. I want my Ever After. No more 

mucking around!’ And so you arrived in my life – 

ten years older, short, funny, white-haired, divorced. 

(That tall, lean, sexy hippie, I turned away / turned from).

You and I, we married soon. For twenty years thereafter

we enjoyed, each, our happiest wedlock, full of spice

and adventure, laughter, and the quiet joys of the everyday. 

Until you died. In the year of your last, slow illness, 

we learned yet more of love; finally entered, mutually,

into the true Unconditional. Together. Answered Prayer.

Written to share with Poets and Storytellers United for Friday Writings #195: Revisiting Old Favourites. (A new poem for an older prompt: I Couldn't Have Done It Without You.)