I flew home from school thinking I was going to get a few hours with Marirose, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. She was asleep when I got here, not surprising seeing how the next few days are going to be a real challenge for her. It’s now pretty late, or should I say late for me with the 04:00 wake up call, and she has not stirred a peep, so I am guessing I will not see her today.

It is a hard thing to love someone, live with them, share their lives and yet feel lonely, missing them even while in the same house. It would be easy to think of the practice sessions, gigs and performances as interlopers that have come between us. “Wake me when you get home…see you in the morning.” It would be easy to see my place in her life is no longer what it was, that I am now, ‘only’ a best friend, an odd combination of big-brother, crock-pot-full-of-comfort-food, and faithful hound. I am the guy you call without embarrassment when the dog brings a dead rat into the house.

A best friend, is not chopped liver, however. Someone who is truly a best friend tries to focus on the good of the other and not on what their own needs might be. Yes, I see the danger of what might result from throwing myself totally on that path, but no relationship, or even life-point of circumstance, ever stands the balance’s test all the time. Those who believe it should, who require it as a standard, are only fooling themselves. Is life ever balanced? I think not. To expect it to be so, is to assume a skewed and crippled view that leaves one open to dreadful surprise and renders one’s contemporaries a source of disappointment.

That’s the path I choose to walk. Music is her passion. It has been ever since she was a little girl. It is what saved her through all the tough times before I knew her. It is the stuff of her soul, what makes her unique. The music of who she is led me to fall in love with her in the first place, though the irony of that is not lost on me. Music is for her, what writing is for me. I cannot imagine if my hands were taken. What would I do? Write with my mouth, brush or pen clenched tightly in my jaw. If I could not see, what would I do? Dictate my stories in a voice recorder. Unless I was rendered nearly inoperative, a stroke or terrible accident, I would find a way to ‘write.’ It is my passion. Music is the same for my resident singer-song writer. I will not in any way stand between her heart and that passion with anything as false as a demand for attention. On Thursday she is going to have her abilities recognized for all the hard, hard labor she has invested in them. She wants me there with her to celebrate, to lean on, to support her—that is good enough for me. That is what love, true love—equal parts admiration, respect, affection and attraction—is all about.

Originally posted in The Salamander’s Quill 1.0 now deleted.