TWO DRIFTERS...OFF TO SEE THE WORLD

 

I woke up this morning, the seventh of July, ready to continue a conversation we had begun the night before. You see, it has been two years to the day since Roma made her exit from our world. For that long our conversations, at least my conversations, have been a part of my daily routine.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I paused to remember the significance of this date, then turned on the TV for my weekly Sunday Morning on CBS fix……..and there it was, apparently waiting for me.

It was a feature segment on Henry Mancini, and there on the screen was Audrey Hepburn singing ‘Moon River.’ A moment later, without a second thought, I had captured the image of Roma and I……”Two drifters, off to see the world.”

After all, that’s what we were. Perhaps you and your life partner can relate to that notion. We were “two drifters’……swept along by tides we did not always understand, not always sure where we were going, or where our ‘drifting’ might take us……yet glad to be drifting together, seeking “the same rainbows end."

“There’s such a lot of world to see,” the song continued. Though we didn’t see it all in our sixty-seven years together, we certainly saw our share of the world, and more.

And now, two years since she decided to ‘drift’ off on her own, leaving me ‘adrift’ in a sometimes empty world, I am left to visit with her in my own way, and dream about the time, somewhere in our future, when we will again be ‘drifting’ together. 

In the meantime I am left to recall the time, just days before she left, when she told me…..”I am glad it is working out this way……with me leaving first, and you staying here to carry on. Because you will be able to do that, and I know I couldn’t……not alone.”

Of course she could have carried on. She is a strong soul. But instead she left. And here I am, two years later, still trying to “carry on,” adrift with the dream of the reunion that surely awaits us…..me and my “huckleberry friend.”