The light surprised her. Where did the light originate? The new lightbulbs overhead or from his face? Both, she decided. The lightbulbs reflected the glow she saw in his eyes. Light brilliantly pervading her own eyes, she stood, transfixed, as a change occurred within her. She understood, now, the lightheaded moments from earlier that afternoon.

She physically shook her head, still holding his hand (for the first time), and stepped down.

"That really changes things, the look of the room, doesn't it. Amazing what a couple of new lightbulbs will do."

She was afraid to look back into his face, afraid because she knew that what she saw and what he would see was something that could not happen. At least not then.

So she tried to forget those few seconds that seemed like at least five minutes. Or was she really standing on that chair for that long? She didn't know. Time never made sense when she was with him. It usually passed much too quickly. But this time, the few seconds seemed like at least three lifetimes. Surely that is how long they had known each other, surely they would know each other for triple that time. Forever? She only hoped, dreamed.

But she stepped off the chair amidst visions of him reaching toward her and spinning her around before gently returning her feet back to the floor. Her feet landed on the rug and creaking floor boards. She brought her mind to the present, to what she knew she knew, not what she felt. And it was this that saddened her.

Did she dare recall the hours spent in bookstores, reading Shakespeare together? Laughing at pictures, at words? If not while awake, at least in her dreams. And her dreams were always there. They always reminded her. Only she awoke with a fresh sense of loss after those dreams. A loss so profound that she made certain he hadn't died overnight. A phone call. Only his voice on the other end confirming he was alive. That's what mattered.

She's sitting in her room now, reminiscing, thirty years older, hair graying. She holds a letter from him in her hands and looks to her book shelf at some of the books they bought together. She brings them to each country she travels. He's doing well, she thinks. She is glad that he married, glad that he found another who saw the depth and passion welling within him that was blatantly obvious to her. Did she still feel the intensity of her loss? No. She did not. She felt only gratitude, a humbling gratefulness that she knew such a man and was privvy to his dreams, fears, visions, and ideas. He never ceased inspiring her.

She sets the letter aside, in her box of memories, pulls out a lilac sheet of soft paper and a fine tipped pen. The laughter of the children playing in the room next to her doesn't disturb her, she only makes certain she places the box on a higher shelf, away from sticky fingers. She sits in her old brown leather couch, laughing at the day she was with him and expressed her appreciation for such a fine piece of furniture. Balancing her clipboard upon her knee, she holds the pen inches above the paper and thinks, her eyes slightly squinting, looking up and to the right, a gentle smile turning one corner of her mouth to the ceiling. And she writes....