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They change you, you know?  Watching them grow…you grow.  You see them face their first fears, take their first steps.  You bear witness to them as they conquer their world, making bigger leaps and bounds than they ever will again.  When I have made my impact, when my numbers run small and my time grows thin, I know the questions I’ll begin to ask:  Where are your children, and what were their first steps like?  With deep sorrow I’ll answer, “My children did not breathe and walk, my children were my dreams.  They sat in classrooms and learned, they existed in novels and fantasies.  They were no children of mine.”  Who is your great love, what was it like growing old with the puzzle piece that completed your soul?  In grand regret I’ll reply, “For many years I stared at my puzzle, missing that one piece.  I searched far and wide, but for long it evaded me.  For some shameful stretch of time I gave up on finding that piece.  It wasn’t under the couch, beneath the cushion.  It could have been swept away, stolen by the visitor, maybe it was never even there.  My love became my work, my heart became warmed by my fathers and mothers; they spoke to me from the textbook, taught me from the podium.  Truth is, when I finally found that puzzle piece, with careful hands I gave her away; I let her go.  The puzzle had taken new form, there was no longer a place for this piece.  It now simply had a hole where there was once a place, and the hole that it carved into me was too magnificent to repair.  For a lifetime I have shoveled the gravel into its depth, never hearing a single stone reach the bottom.  There was no great love of mine.”  I don’t know what the next question is, but I know who I want to be there to ask it, and whatever it is, I hope that I can say to her, “My life isn’t perfect, it’s just as close as I could get. I wouldn’t change anything, but there was a time when I would have.  I wanted you to know that.  It never got small, as so many things did over the years.  It never will.  We’ve lost so much time, I don’t want to lose any more.  Will you spend what little time we have left with me?” 

No matter the answer, this is how the greatest love story of all time will end.  I don’t know what happens when we die, but I do believe in energy.  Love is energy.  And ours will be a field of lilies in the next life, dancing with the wind, truer and stronger than ever.

Spatter