A Thought That Became A Love Letter To My Lover

There is a startling reality that comes as one grows older, the fading away of yourself as a human.  It is hard to decern because it is so subtle, there are no true markers that it is actually occurring and I have never read anyone’s account of it but it is happening to me. Let me try to explain.  When I was a child I felt very important to my parents, as a teenager very important to my friends and sports teams.  As I grew into adulthood I was very important to my career and then to my children.  Still, later I was very important to the vocational department that I built and kept running.  All of those roles required a tremendous amount of me to be realized, by that I mean the vestment of me and others for and with me engaged so much of my being, physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.  As I am moving into my later years I am meaningfully engaged with fewer and fewer people, tasks, and responsibilities.  It is not that I am not busy or that I have fewer relationships with other humans, it is that the meaningfulness of my contribution is less and less necessary.  It is also not a sad thing but more like a very slow passing of one's torch to those that will move it forward.  

Having said all of that there is the most silver of linings to my journey and that is my lover.  We are both going through this together but that does not adequately explain the silver.  What is happening is, what we both use to accomplish individually is now, more and more, taking the two of us to achieve.  The more we fade the more necessary we are to the other.  And here is the silver, most of the meaning of me is held only in her memory, she is the one that has experienced most of my life with me; the life that was so meaningful is now not so much lived as remembered being lived.  And the remembering is the necessity of still being, each to the other.