On My Parent’s 52nd Wedding Anniversary

“To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow–this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.”
– Elizabeth Gilbert

Today would’ve been my parents 52nd wedding anniversary. Just a couple of months before their 50th anniversary my father took his own life. My mother went to bed not knowing that in the morning, she would wake up a widow.

They met as teenagers in Brooklyn. Theirs was not a perfect love story, those exist only in fairytales. Instead, it was one of substance, friendship, mutual respect and admiration. They loved one another through the best of times and the worst of times. They accepted one another’s flaws, shortcomings and imperfections. They nurtured one another’s strengths, dreams and spirits. They laughed and they cried. They celebrated and they fought. They let each other down, then picked each other up. Life is messy, so is love, but through it all they held fast to one another.

This much I always knew growing up in my house, my parents loved one another. Not everybody gets that in this life.

They built a family on the foundation of their love. Their children and grandchildren are their enduring legacy. And today, as I think about my parents, my heart aches that love was not enough to save my father. But death cannot diminish the love that they shared and the life that they fostered. That is where my father’s spirit lives on. That is the flame that can never be extinguished.

And on a day where my mother is missing her husband & best friend, I pray that flame will warm her soul and help to heal her broken heart. We all miss you Dad. You were surrounded by the deepest of love. It is my fervent wish that you knew that, even when the darkness consumed you. And though you are now gone… your love story is without end.  

My father and my mother at her Sweet 16. His enduring words to her.