My Bittersweet Valentine's Day

by Gerald Michael Rolfe

I love Valentine's Day. I really do.

I love the pinkness and the hearts and the ubiquitous intimations of intimacy and of passion. I love the candy, the sweetness, and the sometimes over-the-top decadence of lingerie and kisses and nubile flowers in abundance. Most of all, I love that there is a holiday for love, and not just any love -- but the aching and yearning and most deeply elemental of all love -- romantic love.

But Valentine's Day for me will forever also evoke a different kind of aching and yearning, and an entirely different kind love. It's hard to believe that it's been four years since a small circle of family and I watched our beloved sister Linda pass not so entirely gently into that good night. It really does seem like yesterday -- that Valentine's Day when part of my heart was pulled right out of my chest and taken with her for eternity into an incomprehensible abyss. At least I hope it was taken with her.

I was inalterably changed by what I saw and felt, and four years later I still cannot say completely what that change was, other than that the change had something to do with love. I live more in the moment than I ever did before. The geographical distance between the rest of my sisters and I is far more palapable than it ever was. And every time I leave them now after a visit, even though it is the natural thing to do otherwise, I don't take it for granted that I will ever see them again. I think I will. I hope I will. But now I understand that every time could be the last time. It makes saying goodbye uncomfortable. It can cause a soul to lean toward feeling morose.

But I remain an optimist at heart. Infernally, defiantly so in fact. A real glass-half-full kind of guy or, like my nephew Alex proclaimed to the world about himself while marching up and down an airport terminal at age 3, "I'm a real pain in the ass!". And so when each Valentine's Day comes round again, I wake up with a smile and a feeling of gladness. I kiss my baby darlin' on the forehead and stretch and look forward to the new, pink day with anticipation. Invariably I remember that this is also that other day, and I think of my sister -- I think of all my sisters. And I count myself a lucky man, a man surrounded by more love than many men know in a lifetime. And love is pretty much the most important reason I can think of for being on this rock in the first place.

I love Valentine's Day. I really do.