A Forever Kind of Love

I loved him then.

I love him now.

I loved him when his mother died.

I loved him when he became a father-leader.

I loved him when his father died.

I loved him when the tornado came.

I loved him when COVID hit.

I loved him when and after our daughter died,

and I loved him when the cancer came.

To love is hard.

It’s the: there might be a tree root in the way if I dig a hole for this plant here, hard.

While light shines, darkness will test you.

On the day I found out I was pregnant with our son Hayes, now 12-and-a-half, I witnessed–as a journalist–the paramedics take the body of a middle school boy from a car wreck. My 24-year-old self struggled to process what I’d seen, and the loss the boy’s parents felt; a loss I’d one day understand.

But John was there then, and he has been there during darkest and happiest times.

To marry me isn’t easy because I’m a dedicated author and writer. It’s the artist part of me, and he has never tried to dictate what I have written, do write or will write. As he has said, everything I’ve ever written is true. He understood he had let the artist remain free, and last Thursday, a recent writer’s block broke. Let’s say some great inspiration helped let all the words flow.

But that day, John reiterated his support of me, not only as a wife, but as a writer. To understand this part of me is essential for a strong relationship.

In all of our years together, we’ve experienced so much that might break a couple apart. When I look at him, I feel nothing but love for the man who went to preschool to have lunch and tea time with our daughter, Corrie. I know the adoration for a man who would not stay down after experiencing a break in his left femur two and a half weeks ago.

Now he’s up and walking with a cane. He takes pride in taking steps without it.

The man is a stage 3 colon cancer survivor. He is a person who has walked forward when a few would’ve wished him to sink.

When I looked in your father's eyes—a moment
        about which idealistic poets compose—I 
                                                     fell
in love again as if he had walked across the room
       in a beach bar on Friday night after a 
                                                    three-
hour drive, asked my name, and if I would dance
       before he ever took a shot of crown.

~ An excerpt from "My Five O'Clock Friday" from the When We Danced in the Rain, a Corrie Collection by R.A. Bridges

Feel love come down like rain upon your flesh. Every trickle
and caress under an early April sun gives you goosebumps.  A
smile shows upon your face when you look into your 
lover’s eyes. They hold your hand.

~An Excerpt from "Scent of Lavender" from Road Sides, a Poetry Collection by R.A. Bridges

For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to share some lines from poems past and present. I wrote one for our eleven-year-wedding anniversary. I wrote about the most challenging times, such as the morning of his first surgery to remove the rest of his cancer. Throughout the years, I’ve written the struggles because love is hard.

I write about the happiness, too. The poem below is one I originally wrote as part of a blog in December 2020 about John and his service to others.

Some Loves

Some loves walk in shoes where the toes

fail to reach the inseam, and a “clunk”

rather than a “tap” echoes on the stairwell.

Some loves trip over wires, and fail to

plug in the blue cord where it should go.

Some dance in the way kids say, “Stop

that. That’s no way to dance.” Some loves

experience more pies in the face than

ballets and dreams sold to strangers

on a holiday channel. Some loves are

the made for TV, sugar sweets, the kind

some girls like to eat.

We are more the take off our shoes,

and dip our toes in the lake kind of love.

Hold my hand, so we don’t desert one

another for a wasteland

where our minds may dissolve. We

tie our shoes even when some complain

of the clunk. We trip over wires, and

recover our breath. We hold hands on

the precipice as a

dream of wings

passes us by.

Poetry, photos and words by R.A. Bridges. Copyright 2020-2023, R.T. Bridges