Faded Love

 

I recently attended a funeral where his family provided a video of Pat playing “Faded Love” on his fiddle. I first met Pat when he jammed with Jim, his brother, and a couple of other friends. A man of many talents, Pat was a cabinet maker. He built the cabinets in Harold’s house, where I live now. Later after Harold and I married, Pat’s son Bart built cabinets for our laundry room and the downstairs bathroom.

 I didn’t know about Pat’s Cabinets when I knew him. I knew him only as a talented fiddle player. When I hear “Faded Love,” I can feel every nuance of the fiddle’s plaintive melody because my father-in-law and Jim both played “Orange Blossom Special” and “Faded Love” each time they played their fiddles.  

Life is often full of faded love. When someone you loved is gone from your life forever, eventually your own survival depends on letting it fade into the recesses of your mind, settle deep in your soul, and tackle life without that person.

True love fades, but it doesn’t disappear. Everyone you love leaves an indelible mark that becomes undeniably a part of you.

My life has been enriched by the two men I loved and married. Harold and Jim had different personalities but they were both intelligent men with loving hearts.  

From Jim I learned to love travel, camping, and country music.  Another lesson learned from our marriage was that you didn’t have to be rich to enjoy life.  He also taught me to be generous and to realize someone was always worse off than we were. One of Jim’s philosophies was that if you could solve a problem by throwing a little money at it, it wasn’t really a problem. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that lesson. When dementia changed everything, I learned to live in the moment and not think about the man he was or what the future held for us.

Harold had more faith in my abilities than I did. He mentored me at work and taught me more than I ever learned in college. When we no longer worked together, he continued to support my hobbies. He designed covers for my books, formatted the interiors, wrote a program to highlight possible grammatical errors, uploaded the books and patiently worked his way through the pitfalls of publication. He supported my music and was the one who set up my first solo gig. One day I was practicing, and to my surprise, he said “You are really good.”  Harold mentored me on farming, investments, and dozens of PC tricks and tools. He also taught me that everything that happened in my life was what made me the person that I am.

Although I usually heard only the tune of faded love, the lyrics tell a heartbreaking story of a lost love. It begins with reading letters from a loved one and remembering the past with every heartbeat. The strength of the love is that instead of forgetting this precious loved one, the longing increases over time.

I believe that the most shocking experience for me as being twice widowed is how the pain can break through all the protective defenses that I’ve built throughout the years. The heartbreak can be a tidal wave of grief brought on by any number of mementos. I can see a photo, a handwritten note, or hear a song, and find myself immersed in memories while liquid love rolls down my cheeks.

Not all memories bring about sadness. Sometimes, I have to laugh at the quirky things Jim used to do or the times Harold’s poor hearing made him mishear what I said to him. Yes, love may fade, but the memories, feelings, and stories remain to bring comfort for the rest of my days.

 

Copyright © April 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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Undone

 In my “spare” time, I try to go through a stack of papers, or a box of miscellaneous items. Yesterday, I checked out the box where I had dumped the contents from the console of the pickup before I sold it. From the pile, I pulled out a notebook where I had, of course, made several notes. I tore out the old notes so that I could eventually make more notes.

The book contained notes from zoom calls during the pandemic. One zoom call listed the personnel that had been suspended, others that had been changed to part-time, the employees who had taken on multiple positions, and the CEO who had forgone his salary. Tough times, and tough decisions.

Other notes in this same book were from a civic club and how we could carry on our mission without in-person meetings. Eventually, we changed locations so that we could socially distance while we socialized and did our work.

I noticed to-do lists, but so many tasks remained undone. Seeing the tasks that I never completed was more appalling than the checkmarks indicating the jobs that I’d done.

Life is all about tasks. During my work life, I had checklists for every monthly task I had to complete. Most mornings, I walked into work with a plan for the day, but the day was often derailed as I wound up putting out fires. I began to expect and anticipated the unexpected. No matter how much I did, certain things would be left undone, hopefully to be remembered and completed before the deadline.  

The stories of my personal life are a lot like that too. When I was a care partner for a Jim, I completed daily tasks without a to-do list. Just when I thought I had covered everything, and went to bed for some needed rest, my eyes fly would open and the panic set in as I had the sinking feeling that I had left something important undone. Between work and caregiving, I muddled through the days doing the best I could.

When we face our own mortality, we worry about the important documents we must have and wonder whether they really will help or hinder the process of our family’s adjustment. No matter how carefully we plan, our family can become undone when dealing with the crucial elements as well as the minutiae we leave behind. They can feel defeated before they start.

No one wants to root though mountains of paperwork, deal with someone else’s personal items, collections, and sentimental junk. Trying to figure out what to toss, donate, or sell can be time consuming and overwhelming.

I admire people who become minimalist, but I doubt if I can live long enough to do it on my own. I find comfort in the things that connect me to the past and to loved ones who have gone. I know a lot of the things I hold dear will mean nothing to anyone else.

Instead of one person’s trash being someone else’s treasure, it will be one person’s treasure is someone else’s trash. That must be my motivation for attempting the arduous task of doing the undone.

 

Copyright © April 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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Easter and Homecoming

April 5 is Easter Sunday and a day for family, Easter services, and celebration. We will greet people with Happy Easter wishes and pause to remember why we are celebrating.

This date holds a different significance to me. On this day in my personal history, Sunday, April 5, 1970, Jim returned home after his tour of duty in Vietnam. We celebrated the day annually and though during the hustle-bustle of the Christmas season, we once forgot our anniversary, we never forgot the homecoming day.

Jim and I married in December during his R&R and my biggest fear was that something would happen to him before his scheduled return in May. It was good news when we learned that due to troop withdrawals, he would be coming home a month earlier.

 Excerpt from Indelible (unpublished memoir about Jim):

 Jim’s parents and I arrived at the Kansas City airport hours ahead of time. It was April 5, 1970, and Jim was on his way home from Vietnam. He was supposed to come home on the fourth, but after an anxious day waiting for a call that didn’t come, his parents and I had spent a restless night worried that something had happened to him on his last day in Nam.

The next morning, he called. He explained that the airport was under attack the day, and they wouldn’t let the planes leave. “We kept saying, just go!” After eleven months of expecting to be blown to bits at any moment, he thought the odds were better to just get the hell out of there.

We stood outside waiting for the passengers to disembark. I was wearing a long psychedelic patterned polyester blouse over a short royal blue pleated skirt. The blouse covered the baby bump.

A crowd of people awaited the plane and the arrival of loved ones. From our excitement, they knew we were there to meet a returning soldier. Airport personnel let me go out in front of everyone and across the do-not-cross line. Jim stepped off the plane and pushed his way past the other passengers to grab me up in his arms. He was home at last!

Years later when Jim was in the special care unit of the nursing home, I always remembered the date and tried to make it special in some way. I didn’t remind Jim of the date because I was afraid that he would be upset.

Sometimes, I couldn’t help but be depressed although Jim had risked his life for his country, he was confined behind locked doors because of a brain disease. I broke him out on a regular basis. We went for walks in the park, to DQ for chicken strips or milkshakes, to our home, drives around town, and later, walks in the facility’s hallway and wheelchair rides around the parking lot.

In the midst of Easter celebrations, I will remember the day as Homecoming too. I am the only one to remember the joy of that day in 1970 and how good it was to have Jim safely home.

 Copyright © April 2026 by L. S. Fisher

http://earlyonset.blogspot.com

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