PICTURE WORTH A DOZEN ROSES

Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. Last year you sent me roses, but I was in the hospital. Jim took a picture of them. They’re lovely. This year we are not together, but at least I can look at the roses you will never send to me.

I wonder where you are, how you are, what you are doing, if you are still living in your house, if you are still living… Truthfully, there is not one day I do not think about you. Just yesterday, I was struck by the resemblance of someone I saw in an elevator who reminded me of you. I had my reading glasses on because I had just come from picking up my records and I anxiously read them before leaving the hospital. On my way down to the lobby, as the elevator doors opened, a man in the middle of the floor stared directly at me, and he looked so much like you, not as stately and certainly not as gentlemanly. I was so stunned that I let the doors close without getting on.

I thought as I drove home, “What if it was him? What would I say?”

There is no excuse now. Too much has happened, too much time has passed, too many things to explain why I am not there with you. All you need to know is that I am not involved with any man and do not expect to ever be again in my life.

I may be moving to Ohio, living with friends, or up to New Hampshire. It is not certain when or where. That is the reason I disconnected from you, but also that I continue to be very ill most of the time.

Take good care of you.