Today my beloved wife Waltraut and I celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary!  35 is a good number, and while not as amazing as 50 or 60, it is still respectable.  We’ve had our frustrations, our disagreements, and our grumpy days together, but through it all love has shone through.  She has made my life worth living, and without her I doubt I would have achieved as much as I have, nor will it have been anywhere near as happy.

It’s bittersweet, though, because she will not be with me much longer.  Cancer, or “The Big C” as John Wayne called it, has shortened her days, and our path as one will soon part into two as she goes to that far country from which none return.  I’m trying to be poetic here, but there is no poem in my heart.  Faith comforts me that we will be together again, and in a far better condition than now, but that is the future.  At this time it is still the present cold reality that confronts me, and in just a few weeks the inevitable will happen.  I will take full advantage of the time remaining to us, of course.  But it will be a sad “au revoir”, or, in her native tongue, “auf Wiedersehen”.

As those words suggest, this will only be a temporary separation, and I rejoice for that reason!  And as I rejoice at having had a fine 35 years of glad partnership!