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With a sigh
You turn away
With a deepening heart
No words to say

Dearest love…

I look at our wedding photos and I see nothing of me and everything. You’ve lived with a stranger for a quarter of a century without knowing; not strange to you in every way, but another person in our relationship. That she never spoke to you speaks volumes, I know. She has loved you more than her own life, and but for folly and carelessness, you might never have met. You’ve turned away, a deepening heart…betrayed and abandoned even as you sit next to me. Lost and afraid even as she wraps her heart around yours like a comforter on a chilly night; the chill created by her own presence.

No words to say? That I could not speak the words she needed to say and you needed to hear? Fear ruled my heart; your faith in me was misspent in a way, since you had trusted the unworthy? Believed the unbelievable? Looking at her when I stood there? Seeing me?

At sixty I look back on a path that I would never have chosen had I known…had I been able to feel? But the path I chose is the path we both walk upon in unity, perhaps for the first time in our relationship. I’m more alive than ever even as part of me has died. That I am stronger than ever even as much of me speaks from weakness and loss of strength. And I am filled with hope even as much of what I might have hoped for…much of what I did hope for but forgot in the storm of my childhood barely exists?

Would you have married the woman who weeps with shame? Would you have loved the man who saw himself as a young girl in her youth? Would you have rescued from hell the one who saw you as a second…a third…too many extra chances to count.

Questions of what could have been or what might have been…what should have been? No amount of looking into the past can change the present or forge the future; the view provides a prism through which I’ve only just begun to understand myself. To expect you to understand even as I struggle...I may only hope...

You will find
That the world has changed forever

The world has changed forever and yet it remains just as it was the day before you read my story…I am still the one you married. I will not insist or expect or even hope for anything other than what is best and true and understood by both…by three in a way. But no crowds in the bedroom…no new faces…but maybe a voice? A written word to tell you who I really am? Who I’ve really been all along? You are my life and my love, and I know that you know…It frightens me, since you look at me and see the same man.
Even if my garb and my countenance changed…I’d still be your love…sixty and counting….To another it would seem foolish…an indulgence to satisfy whimsy or a mad and silly dream. But to you…sooner than later, you’ll hold me like you’ve always held me; woman to man, wife to husband…. And yet more than that…perhaps woman to woman in a new understanding?

The trees are now turning from green to gold
And the sun is now fading
I wish I could hold you closer

Even as the winter snow fades into the softening warmth of the soil, it is still the Autumn of our lives; the leaves of our hearts are turning and the colors change from green to gold. You mean the world to me, and I hold two things close to me even as I think of you. You will come to know more of the man you married even as you discover the woman you loved all along. I may fight old fears and doubts and see only the pretender in another form…clothing suited to soft and warm and tender stretched and ill-fitting, perhaps. But your constant love will cause that image in my heart to change, even as your image of me has been changed. And your image will grow more beautiful with each passing moment.

I wish I could hold you closer.

Epilogue

Now... recalling our last time together... The final kiss...who knew it would be forever? 'I love you' exchanged. Newness dawning for us both. Acceptance for me... understanding for you? Peace and love and joy in one final moment? I miss you even as I still hear your voice. And that gladdens my broken heart... Until we hold each other again, I know that you know I love you. And I know that even if you never spoke my name, you love Andrea.

Arwen's Song
From the Motion Picture
Return of the King
Extended Version
Words and Music by
Howard Shore
As sung by Liv Tyler
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUiCGR5JHqA