It is Better to Have Loved and lost...

That's such a brief time to be with the love of your life, and I'm beyond sorry. But it's worth it. Thankfully, I haven't lost a husband having never been married, but I've had people of both genders for a brief time before they passed on. For one, my maternal grandpa (George Elmer "Greeley" Jobe). I only got to be with him for just under seven years, but I'll always cherish the memories we made together. Another was a delightful old lady named Nelle Smith. We met in 1971 just before I graduated from high school, and she passed away in the autumn of 1973. She would have been 87 just a short time later. We were good buddies for about 1 1/2 years before she had a stroke while pulling weeds in her front yard. The shortest time I got to know somebody was one school year. Mike Clem and I sat at the same table during art class that year. Over Memorial Day Weekend 1969, his trick-back came out while he was swimming, and he drowned. We had planned on getting together and going swimming out at Ryan's Lake that summer, but this never happened. Mike was an amazing artist, so my dad told me that there would probably be at least some times when God would have Mike to paint the sunset. The first time I knew for sure that this happened was when I was out running some errands, and Mike's favorite pop tune (Touch Me by The Doors) came on the radio (oldies station, as this happened more than 30 years after he'd drowned), and I saw the most awesome sunset! But the sunset was even MORE awesome the time that this happened the second time. Touch Me was playing, and the sunset just blew me away. And I noticed the sign on this storage rental place that said Flat Rock Storage. This took place in the Fortville/Oaklandon area of Indiana, and Mike had drowned in the Shelbyville area a good twenty or so miles from there--in the Flat Rock River! A brief time to know a person in all three cases, but I wouldn't have missed knowing them for the world in order to avoid grief...