To my wife Lezley, on our fourth wedding anniversary…

I know you hate when I do this, but since it’s only once a year I’m hoping you can give me a pass.

We shouldn’t work.  We are too different… in every single way. Even down to the way we’ll spend eternity (you in the cemetery, me in an urn).

We know everything about each other. I love you. I can’t imagine life without you… and that’s saying something… because I like to think I have a decent imagination.

And I like to use “…” a lot.

When I proposed to you in December 2013, I said  “… the worst day of my life with you is still better than the best day of my life without you.”  Again, “without you” at the time seemed unimaginable.

Then, Wednesday, February 7, 2018 hit us all like a steam shovel locomotive 747 jet combination.  For the first time, in all our time together, that unimaginable concept “without you” was ever so briefly on the table.

It sucked. It hurt. It was scary… and it REALLY pissed me off.  Why was this happening? Why weren’t allowed to be happy? Were we taking something for granted?  What the hell?

But you being the tough chick that you are soldiered on… didn’t always seem like the appointments, the treatments or the testing would ever end, but they did.  I wasn’t there for all of it, but I was there for most of it.  I still regret that.

October 18, 2014 was one of the best days of my life. You were the most beautiful bride I had ever seen. I look at that picture of you on that day every day – there’s one at each drawing board I work at.  It has been said that a woman is the most beautiful she’ll ever be on her wedding day.  Total bullsh-t.  You’re beautiful every day… you contending you’re NOT beautiful makes you even MORE beautiful to me… and a little irritated because you won’t, even in passing, acknowledge that you are fiiiiine as hell.

But you know what? You were even MORE beautiful on the day of your last treatment and you rang that bell.I married that woman.

Love you sweetheart.  Happy anniversary.

That dude who lets the dogs out.