I Hope I LOVE YOU Does the Trick: Veneration of a 34th Wedding Anniversary

Hello, is it me you’re looking for

I can see it in your eyes

I can see it in your smile

You’re all I’ve ever wanted

And my arms are open wide

‘Cause you know just what to say

And you know just what to do

And I want to tell you so much

I love you

Lionel Richie — 1983

October 10, 1984

Dear Dave,

Hiya! How are you? I’m fine. Any new women in your life? All of a sudden, I don’t know what to say because I don’t want to get corny. I hope, I LOVE YOU does the trick. That goes for as a friend and a lover.

I thought of buying you a cheer-you-up card but I wasn’t walking in the direction of town, so I went home and made you one. Isn’t it cheery? I can understand what you’re going through. I think that for 60% of the population, it’s difficult to jump successfully into the job market and be happy too. It’s greatly a matter of time. I don’t think you should blame yourself, personally—you’re the “New World Man”!

I really felt I could talk to you as I would a good friend, on the phone Monday night. I continued to tell myself not to be jealous and to be open-minded, listening to you confide in me, as a concerned and empathetic friend, temporarily putting aside the fact that I am emotionally tied to you as a lover also.

It has made me feel good about myself, as well as our relationship, that you expressed that you really don’t need someone else to talk to, sort of as an emotional release, as I did with Mike P. when you and I were not getting along. I also, for at least the past year and a half, have not needed, nor indulged in running to a person of the opposite gender for emotional support, except for you.

I’m a little bit afraid that I may lose you to a new cute, attractive woman—that possibility is always present even in marriage. But it’s heathier and more satisfying for our relationship to be open, honest and trustworthy, rather than close-minded, pessimistic, and jealous. What I said about my feelings towards other men is very true and always will be.

I’ve established, for myself, strong feelings of security, friendship and love in you. There’s never been (In the past year and a half) a thought that crossed my mind that would risk losing those qualities in our relationship. I wish we were together now so we could talk more about it.

Trust and honesty go a long way in the establishment of a truly satisfying and long-lasting friendship.

Hey, I think we’ve come a long way baby! (ha ha), and every step has been worth it, as painful as it may have been at times. The fact is, we can deal with it.

Well, I’ve already said too much.

Did I tell you I Love you yet?

I’ll be looking forward to seeing you again when, where, and however that may be.

See ya’, Deb

****

David and I were married July 25^th, 1987. We celebrated fourteen wedding anniversaries together in life, twenty apart in afterlife. Since I wrote him a letter for his birthday in May, I decided that my gift to him, if we were slicing carrot cake together, would be a letter that I had written to him when we were the tender ages of 21 and 24.

I penned this letter October 10, 1984, tucking it inside of a homemade card, when I was a senior at SUNY, College at Cortland, where we met in 1981. Having already graduated the previous December, Dave was living in his parent’s home in Wappinger’s Falls, NY, a semi-rural hamlet in the mid-Hudson River Valley. Separated by 190 miles, we corresponded in continuous threads of hand-written letters and weekly telephone calls. At this time, Dave, having earned a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Math and Computer Science, was grappling with feelings of worthlessness in a ten-month post-graduate wake of continuous employment rejections, primarily due to legal blindness and his inability to drive himself to work. There was no public transportation in that area at the time. Despite his visual impairment, Dave was a motocross enthusiast and competitor. Straddling his YZ 250, we often open-throttled over green vales and along the Amtrack rails serging the Hudson, with my hands clutched around his waist, Rocker blond waves flying, racing into the wind.

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