To all there was to me and all that is me,

     I sit with an uncontrollable joy in my heart. For with this, I give to you the last words of love I’ll ever have to speak on earth. No more searching for ways to describe how I love you or how I wanted to spend every second listening to every word of love that passed so delicately from the lips of your kiss. When I’m with you again, words will cease to exist.

     I need to hold you again. I still blame myself for not being strong enough to keep death from taking you. I know I gave you all the strength I had. In my heart I kept hoping that death would see us together and know we should never be separated. Why would I need to be stronger if he could see the same things we saw, the very first moment we met? Where was his heart that day? I’m sorry; I must stop focusing on the events I cannot change. I’ve spent the last thirty anniversaries since you past on doing this with my letters; I will not carry on like this with my last one.

     There is a bouquet of Dandelions in front of me. Why you loved these weeds, I could never figure. I would have bought you roses, tulips or any other flower you wanted, but you never would take anything but Dandelions. I still laugh about when I was caught in the neighbor’s yard picking them. You were no help. You sat on the porch chuckling at me as I tried to explain to them why I was out there at one o’clock in the morning. I never wanted to see another one of those dreadful weeds again. You let me scream and holler at you when I returned home from the humiliation. You didn’t say a word until I was finished. Then all you did was look at me with that smile and say, I love you. That was all it took and I was back outside picking them once more. God I miss that smile.

     It was that smile I noticed when I first met you. I was so terrified to talk to any woman. You made it easy with just that smile. You played me like a fiddle that first night. You knew you had me when you first noticed me. Playing so hard to get, then telling me later that you had to be sure I wanted you. It was that smile that would later stop me from losing myself when I was fighting in the war. It was because of you that I refused to die until I could look upon that smile once more.