Ann, Eleven Years Older- Growing Younger With Me

Rog - September 13, 2006

On our wedding night

Friends of Ann’s

Took us to a country inn to have Catfish

Although we enjoyed catfish and company

We arrived back early

My anxiousness must have showed

Dramatically all over my face!

We were no sooner to my wife’s home

Then we went directly to bed

Afterwards, I was ashamed of my performance

But to shift the focus from me-

(I must have been out of my mind, for I said,

“well it wasn’t as expected.”)

How could I be forgiven?

But I was forgiven, at least to a certain extent.

Over the years

While I got older

Ann got younger

When I remember

The deep feelings of love and desire

I had for Ann

In the hours, days and months

I would have married her

To share my life with her

Would I have been 27

And she 80

Our anniversary is still April 20^th

We shared our lives 49 years

Before Ann passed away March 5^th 2004

We will share each other again.

Ann experienced Alzheimer’s

The last 9 years of her life

I stayed with her

Some times at our own home

Some time in institutions

I wanted to be there with her forever

To look after her in all ways that I could

To give and help her maintain her dignity

To constantly remind her that she was loved

When she seemed to think

I was someone who had just come in to help

To help her remove her clothes and into her pajamas for bed

And, help her out of her pajamas to bathe

And into her clothes for the new day

I reminded her of my love for her.

On the afternoon of March 5^th 2006

Setting in her rocking chair looking out a window

She ask me for a drink of water

When I returned I knelt by her chair

With the small glass of water

She took a sip, smiled and handed the glass to me

Her smile still on her lips

She laid her head on the back of the chair

And, passed on to a better place, forever.

Ann was as beautiful then as the day we married.

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