How long has it been? Looking back,
so much has happened since we met
sixty years ago when you were twenty
and I was sixteen. We married
one year later in the village church,
with everyone gathered around —
aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents.
You went to work in the village store, and
bought it a year later when the owner retired
Nine months later our son was born.
We had a good life, with two more children,
a daughter and a son. The village grew and
prospered. Twenty years later the war came
and took our eldest son.
I asked why his life was taken.
You said with sadness and tears
that there is too much money to be made
in war, and the people who say that
don’t fight in them. Every year on his birthday
we go to his grave and pray that someday,
people will have more sense. But they don’t.
Now we are old, and you are dying. I hold you
in my arms, my love, as you held me in yours
when we were young and when we lost our son.
You have been a blessing to me since I was
sixteen. You have been a blessing to our family,
and to everyone who knows you. Soon you will
but your blessing will remain for the rest of my life.
What I write 