[Undated letter--never mailed]
Dear Punkus,
During those long and lonely years we were apart, I made two promises. One--I would not marry until I found you and made sure we two couldn't be wed. Two--that I would not die until I held you in my arms again. Unfortunately, I can only keep one of those promises! In your recent letter to me (the first one you wrote since coming out of your years-long coma) you mentioned how memories of our past love affair came tumbling out of your fog of forgetfulness like glittering diamonds dropping out of an upturned, velvet, jewel bag. "Treasured memories," you wrote! You recounted how our parents and teachers smiled at the two of us in elementary school as we moved, hand-in-hand, throughout the day...more like grown-up lovebirds, they said, than as brother and sister-like. I don't remember those early days, but I do remember our early teen-age days when we had eyes for each other only. Our love, it seemed, just wrapped around us as naturally as a warm, morning mist. Ours was not a red-hot, torrid affair. It came to us as a gentle understanding of each other's wants and needs. No lovers' spats--no petty jealousies. We just knew instinctively that we were destined to live our lives as one unbreakable union. The words "I love you" never crossed our lips in those early days. Words like that were unnecessary additions. You wrote about the one time I did say those words to you. It was during wartime. My two best buddies had volunteered for army service. I waited as long as I could before my conscience came to terms with willingly separating myself from you. A few days before I left for overseas duty, we had a final intimate moment. Again, it was something that came about naturally--without pressure...without drama--and it was beautiful! That was the night you heard me whisper those three, precious words. And now that I am a few days, a few hours maybe, from surrendering my life to this prostate cancer piercing my body, I want my attending nurses to testify that with my last gasps I was speaking your name..."Darling...darling Punkus!" [THE END?]
