Tuesday, April 4, 2023
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Thank you, everyone, for being present to represent the love and respect Lori had for you.
I read this the other day from a book that a good friend and co-worker sent to me in the mail.
“They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.”
- William Penn
Lori and I were separated literally and figuratively for what summed up to be years during our earlier years together. Our first 20 years of dating and marriage included separation during college, me leaving home to start a career in the Marine Corps, my almost constant series of training and operational deployments around the world, and those business trips that launched the early stages of my career without a uniform.
“We lived, endured, survived, and longed for one another in life. As I cherish [her from] far away, I hold in my heart the memory of my [most beloved] one”.
…always and forever.
- Martha W. Hickman
As “kids”, she introduced herself to me and enveloped me in very much the same way each one of you came to know her. She pulled me in…literally. She welcomes you and embraces you with her personality, kindness, and bubbly form of southern charm. For me, it was a very physical and unexpected introduction. She grabbed and tugged me by the arm and shoulder and said, “this is my buddy!” Doing so saved her from a terrible night with a guy that didn’t end up being the guy she thought he’d be. That started the first night we’d spend together.
33 years is a long time to know someone. We essentially grew up together. We didn’t know each other but realized quickly that we had more in common than we’d anticipated…our goals, aspirations, and lives were out there…way out there beyond what anyone from our families and friends could see.
Where we differed is what became the snare that trapped me and became tighter if I tried to resist. She saw me…inside me. She recognized potential in me that I didn’t know I had. She didn’t run from my dream. She instead made it hers as well and attached herself and her dreams to me while remaining her own individual self. She saw someone she could love…and said it first I might add. She became my love and my best friend. Over time, she was my conscience, my morality, my jailer and liberator. She will continue on as my constant measure for what is right, charitable, and respectable in a person that can give without necessarily transferring some “thing” from her hand to yours. She gave deeply with the substance of the soul.
That’s a gift that’s hard to give back in the full measure that she gave it. Today’s world became a driving force for her. The way she carried herself and served others became more of a driving force in the past few years…even through COVID-19. We had long hours of conversation on the topics of today’s political and moral landscape…those rides to and from the Catskills could be a doozy at times.
On kindness and self-education leading one’s respect for religious and spiritual beliefs and the simple acts of kindness available to us to share daily:
Tolerance leaves us short of the true respect for and openness to others that should lead us through life each day; our beliefs, our choices, our preferences, and our opinions. Respect brings us all closer to the love, compassion, empathy, and inclusion that are common core to all religious and spiritual interpretation and that sets us apart in humanity. Recognizing these commonalities and embracing them as a form of the same indelible characteristics we want to teach and leave for our children are the ties binding us all. Educating yourself to seek out what binds us versus those that appear to be so different is amongst the greatest shows of respect.
To say that I miss her is an understatement. The thought of 33 years as a short portion of the 66 years we could have had in body together has been agonizing.
“But in the ways in which our love was “beyond the world” – not dependent on a particular place or time or set of circumstances – surely that love persists, wherever we are, whatever the circumstances of our life now”.
- Martha W. Hickman
Your boys & I love you, baby.
Always & Forever…
