Love Poem

Suffering does not make us strong.
Like honesty, it wears us down
and creates a challenge.
Nor is there a way to avoid it.
Like the kitchen sink,
it is simply a part of this life.

What’s silly is the effort to deny it.
We do grow old, get injured, wear our bodies out.
No one is able to miss
the pain we feel.
And what is the problem with that?
Must we live a lie?

What are friends for, 
but to help us deal with our problems?
Not to cheer us up
or tell us we’re not going to die.
(That is certainly the toilet
of our lives.)

Better to remember
the life lived happily together; 
share silly humor when we haven’t strength
left to laugh, but still can smile;
tough times we cried together, 
and the heavy loads we lifted and carried together;
most of all the trust;

and things we never wrote down:
disappointments, sorrows,
the fears we brought to each other
and did not care
because they explained who we were.
And did not stop there:
but loved each other to the end.

Amen. Amen.