My Boyfriend

I have a boy friend.  His name is Bob.  He is 95 years old and yes, My Loving Spouse knows about him.  Bob and I sang in the choir together in our church in California.  Bob is very special.  If you don’t really pay attention to Bob, you’d think he was perhaps a crusty old guy, but you’d be wrong, because you would have missed the twinkle in his eye.

I don’t really know how it happened, a God thing I guess.  Years ago, just before choir practice for some reason, I went up to the bass section to give someone a hug for something and then gave a hug to Bob too.  (You see at this point, I didn’t really know how special he was, so gratefully he got steered into my path).  Bob thanked me for the hug and said, “You know, I wasn’t raised with hugging.  I didn’t start hugging people until I was about 82….  I think I’ve really missed something.”

For me, hugging friends my parents age was as close as I could come to hugging them again.  So I started hugging Bob twice a week.  One hug at choir practice and one on Sunday morning.  In the beginning, Bob was a little bit shy about the hugs, as if he expected them to stop, but the shyness went away.  As he got older, most of his hugs were delivered sitting down.  It was I that received the blessing, as we slowly began to love one another.  I don’t have the words to express the filling of my soul, when he would see me coming, he’d smile and throw his arms out wide for me.  Oh, I do miss that so….

The hardest person to tell we were moving was Bob.  I was nervous.  I told him I had something hard to tell him.  I explained why we were moving and I hugged him.  He said, “Oh, I will miss you so, but it sounds like you are going for the right reasons… ”  I felt as if he’d blessed our move.

I didn’t want to leave him ‘hug-less’ so asked my niece and a friend to start giving Bob hugs…I am sure that they do their best…  but still…. it is not me…  I write Bob letters from the farm, every few weeks or so, because he likes it and because the older I get the more I want to just treat people how I want to be treated (see Mom it finally stuck)… honestly,the letters are mostly the stories that you read here… but Bob is not of the computer age, so he is ‘impressed’ that the letters include pictures, which we know is not all that impressive and sometimes the color ink is not really working, but still, it is the thought that counts….and I imagine his pleasure at going to the mailbox to find a letter…  He says he saves them and reads them over and over.  He sent a few letters here, which I also treasure.  He had to get a new ribbon for his type-writer to send them, so I doubly appreciated the effort.  He is having trouble and his hands are not working well now, so I do not expect any more letters from him.

Bob has a girlfriend (besides me).  Myrtle lives in another state and they do the crossword puzzle together every night over the phone.  She came to help him celebrate his 95th birthday…. I think he looks pretty dapper.

I know one day, one of you will tell me that Bob has been ‘called home’.  I will be sad…  But for now… those of you who know Bob, let’s give him a TON of hugs and tell him, that they are from me!

And if and when, I go down south for a visit, you can bet, my getting a hug from Bob will be at the top of my list.