Loss — wrenchingly difficult,
sometimes horrific, almost
unendurable. The man wanted
his father to live on — well beyond

the seventeen years. Now, fifty-
seven years after the fact, the man
is grateful for those seventeen
years, the memories, the love.

The man’s children were twenty
and twenty-four when his wife,
their mother died. While they
don’t talk about her death and

the booming, screaming vacancy
in their lives, and while he
doesn’t intrude on that sacred
territory with inquiry, but only

speaks from his own perspective,
the man hopes in the twenty-six
years since her death, that
they have gratitude that they

had the most loving person
in their lives for twenty and
twenty-four years respectively
and can be grateful that they

will go on loving that person
for the rest of their lives.

*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC-0lSxevsQ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v-QC-)01SxevsQ.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v-QC-)01SxevsQ.

My late wife and I danced to these songs from the 60s.