I’ll Never Find Another You - A Last Love Letter

My dearest Lorena,

You have been dead a week now.

It seems more like a month or two or ten.

Time drags when you are sad.

It was just two months ago that we moved in together.

Into our new home right here, baby.

Here. And, I am still here.

When I met you now two years ago, I remember thinking you couldn’t be the one for me.

You were a nice girl, kind and reserved. I was the opposite.

“I want to find my life partner,” you told me, matter-of-factly. On our first date.

I remember trying to talk myself out of a relationship.

“I’m not sure she is educated enough, knowledgeable enough,” I told Nina, my therapist.

Nina stopped me dead in my tracks, as she has a tendency to do. “Have you ever considered that maybe Lorena has more to teach you than you have to teach her? You know a lot of ‘stuff,’ Jim, but knowing a little about a lot of things isn’t the same as knowing the two or three most important lessons of life. Listen to what Lorena is telllng you, and keep your eyes open to what she is showing you.”

And, I did.

And, I learned life’s most important lessons from you, Lorena, my love.

I learned patience, a quality I never had and frankly never wanted to have until I saw you put patience into action in the way you treated me.

I learned selfless love. When you were dying, you telephoned my daughter and left a message, “I am worried about your Daddy,” you were crying. You were worried about me. I will save that voicemail for the rest of my life as a reminder of what selflessness sounds like.

I learned passion. Not sex. But real passion. A place in space and time where the physical is important, not because of what you do, but because of who you were.

I learned honesty. “That’s bullshit, Jim, and you know it.” I heard that phrase from you more than once.

What I did not learn from you or anyone else, my darling, is the importance of time. While we had some wonderful times together, we spent too much time planning and not enough time doing.

When asked man’s greatest mistake, the Buddha replied, “Man’s greatest mistake is the belief he has more time.”

Indeed.

If I had our life to live over again, I would change nothing except to live more of it, to take nothing for granted, not waste a single moment together. I would express my love and respect for you more often, and recognize then what I recognize now: You were not perfect, but you were perfect for me. You were who I needed.

Thank you for the times we shared.

I love you. And I know that I will never find another you.

Recorded not long after you were born, sweetheart, this is for you:

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