Love Letters to Anne

I can't stress enough how important it was that he offered for me to live with him, and that I accepted it. In a quick nutshell, this time was a time of growth and stability for awhile that we had made ourselves. Carved out of the rock with our own hands. Still something festered in me. I could not escape it, and he has always been there. Especially then.

This person has been one of the singularly influential people in my life. I can't overstate his contribution to my mindset through some pretty hard times. We are partners in crime, we are partners in creations both literary and painted. He is an artist to my poet. We get something from each other and that grows in the love and respect we have for each other, the understanding of where we've been and where we are now.

Through marriages and children, family dramas and close calls and deaths. I've always been able to count on him if I ever needed him. It goes beyond giving me his own shirt, which he would do for me, but something about the way he just believes in me. In literary exercises, in art explorations, he just does. And it's reciprocated, I know that one day he will be known for not just his art, but for his character. And when that time comes, I'll tell the stories to his estranged son that show it.

There were others as well. I have had a lot of help surviving.

There was a family I knew when we first moved to Florida, they lived just a few houses down from us. I had no way to know that the girl there, and her parents and I would become a family that gave me some normality in my tumultuous life.

Most of the adult guidance I got that stuck with me came from them. And in my twenties, when things were always shifting, they offered me a place at their table.

See one day when I was at my apartment with my roommate, their daughter came to me. Her and her parents had a real bad argument, and she needed a place to crash while she figured out her next moves and hid from her parents. She wanted to go into the Navy...well, I thought this was a bad idea for her. I gave her more of a perspective on it and ultimately she decided against going into the service. I got credit for this from her parents. Hero status. But that's what she and I did for each other, we looked after one another as two only children, we were each others' siblings. Looking after each other with the fire of a familial love. I had never known this in these degrees. This was a period of transcending ans shifting and sifting. With them I was complete, the adored chosen son, and the family operated in love, even if there was some disfunction. Every family has it as far as I've seen. No one appreciating what they have. Well, when I was given this insight into family life and what it could be, I cherished these times.

When she died from the cancer I was lost for a long time. I still miss her. I miss dancing with her like we used to thirty years ago. God, it was another lifetime ago.

I still talk with her mother. This woman has been my mother through so many tribulations. Always there with advice or perspective. Always there to love me. In my perfect world I would get to take care of her as if I could ever repay what she's been to me.

Another old friend to be celebrated. I'm so grateful for them, so grateful to them all.