Darling Pam,
Yesterday Marc Harris send out a video link, https://bit.ly/47CJXPl and it is powerful. It’s a song by Danny Veto called, “If This is the Last Time.” Listen to the chorus:
“If this is the last time, please come close
I love you with all my heart, you know
I don’t wanna cry, I’m bad at goodbye
If this is the last time”
Oh my darling, how often we have said these four words will change your life and perspective: “Pam, you have cancer.”
From the onset of those words, we began reordering our lives, but as is human nature, I think, we kept some semblance of our normal.
“There is no treatment” are three words that dramatically changed our world and restructured any normal of the past.
So, back to the strange title of this love letter written on our wedding anniversary. You may recall from your sailing days, that dead reckoning ,or DR, is a navigational tool for determining your position on a course when you can solve for 2 of 3 variables: speed, time or distance.
Using that formula, I’m going to try and determine our position.
TIME: I met you Sweetie a little over 58 years ago, that’s more than half a century ago! That day you caught my eye and I’ve never had eyes for another. It wasn’t too long thereafter that you had my heart. Over the years you have been my protagonist, you’re my best friend, were my business partner, always my lover, parent to my children and my greatest cheerleader.
I’ve heard it said that you can’t live in the future, because it is but a dream; and you can’t live in the past, because it is passed. You must live in the present, because that is all that’s at hand.
I would suggest that the present, without the past, offers no bearings. If you don’t have your current coordinates you’d better know how to DR to know your position and avoid danger.
So, looking back at our course and I can view the distance of the past to track our course and may I say, we are right on course.
TIME is going too darn fast to measure, but I maybe can solve for DISTANCE.
As I sit writing this letter my mind is racing through the history of our life together, the people, the places, the faces, those “chance” encounters that were not chance at all, they were providence ordering our lives. We’ve covered too much ground, I can’t not measure the distance of our lives together. Therefore, I’m sorry, but I can’t determine the speed, so I don’t know the timing of our destination.
But, this I do know, like the Apostle Paul, “I (you) have fought the good fight, I (you) have finished the race, I (you) have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for (you) the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to (you) on that day,”
You have never trusted your good works for salvation and like all of us, we have made our share of mistakes, but as someone who has feasted at the bounty of fruit that your life has produced, I can attest there is good fruit there.
You have glorified your Heavenly Father in life, you are glorifying him in the death process and soon your enjoyment of him forever will be transformed.
I thank you for the front row seat. I just looked up and I can see this photo, which a lady gave us at church recently. It wasn’t until she had the photo framed and brought to church to give us that she learned that you are dying. It is such a tender picture of how we end this race together. My arm around you, your head on my shoulder, wrapped in worship.
I love you Pam, I love you more than life.
Happy Anniversary.
If this is the last time, please come close
I love you with all my heart, you know
I don’t wanna cry, I’m bad at goodbye
If this is the last time
Brad