Love is Forever

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes, 30 seconds

After several minutes, she agreed to my request and said that our marriage and her relationship would stay as they were for two weeks.

Her response was both a surprise and a relief, which I thought would be easy to implement.

At the time, she was not working. Most days, I would leave for work before she woke up. The notes I wrote her over those two weeks were longer and more passionate than any I wrote before or after. Not sure if my love notes made a difference, but I put my entire heart and soul into each one of them.  

One Day at a Time

We did our first shift together on the ambulance squad. It was a quiet night with only two calls. Every time I attempted to join a conversation, everyone stopped talking. The evening was like walking on thin ice. I wrote a note to Jan suggesting we might want to see if they could get someone to cover our next shift. She nodded her head yes.

The next day I called the crew chief on a work break and asked to skip our shift. He said yes, but then said, “With everything going on with the two of you, it is probably a good idea not to be on the same shift.” I avoided responding as I did not want to know what he knew.

On Thursday of the first week, I met a friend on my way home on the subway. We chatted as best we could on the train. When my stop came, I said I would go to her stop and walk her home. As we walked to her apartment, she asked how I was doing. She handed me a Kleenex. I started to weep as no words could come from my mouth.

She said she was sorry that our marriage was having problems. She then offered me two pieces of advice. People usually cheat because they are missing something in the relationship, and you have to find out what that is.

I nodded and mumbled that I was trying to understand and accept my responsibility. My friend offered to help if I needed to talk.

Her second piece of advice shocked me. “We were all surprised! I wanted to know more, but we had reached her house. His reputation is one of using and abusing women, and the last two girlfriends have restraining orders against him.

My mind raced faster than a home run out of Yankee Stadium. If she divorced me and then he abused her, would I have enough love and strength to help her? Would she even let me? She could divorce me, but that would not stop me from loving her. If you love someone, you need to be there for them when they need you, not when you need them.

The Last Weekend

As the end of the two weeks approached, I was exhausted and weak. I had hardly slept, and my stomach was so upset that liquid Pepto Bismol became my preferred drink. I felt deep in my soul that I had lost the love of my life.

Sunday, when the two-week period ended, I was one hundred percent sure she would ask for a divorce, and I had role-played it in front of the bathroom mirror to ensure I did not cry. If she was leaving me, I knew I needed to be strong enough to accept it in a way that would allow me to be there for her if her new boyfriend abused her. As much as I practiced, tears still flowed like an open fire hydrant on Maujer Street.

The last Saturday, we went to an event for the ambulance squad where we were both squad members and served on the board. Her boyfriend was a member but not on the board. 

I was nervous about going as it would be the first time I would be with her when her boyfriend was also present. Because I had heard from many people about the affair, I was sure they would know more about her relationship and its likely devastating impact on our marriage than I did.

Jan put on a beautiful new dress I had bought for her and insisted we go. When we arrived, everyone greeted me with hugs and back slaps. They whispered to me, but loud enough for Jan to hear that they did not like it when people intentionally hurt me. 

When I stood up to speak about the importance of community and volunteerism, I realized her boyfriend was not at the event. Among the topics in my speech was the importance of commitment to our neighbors and community. Everyone liked my address and clapped for what seemed like forever, and I felt I was in a room full of friends.

After the event, we helped clean up the hall. I almost cried when I walked by the payphone I used to make my first call to her. We walked out with Ricky and Margie, hugged me, and waved at Jan.

We parted and began what I was sure was our last walk home as a married couple. We turned right on Graham Avenue and headed north. We talked about the evening. She kept saying how excellent my speech was. I wanted to ask if she had heard the word commitment but chose not to ask.

When we turned left on Ainslie Street, our conversation ended. I wanted to tell her I loved her but was afraid I would cry. We had walked home this way so often; it felt like loving memories surrounded us.

I broke the silence as we turned right onto Lorimer Street, only a half block from our apartment. “I am sorry your boyfriend wasn’t there tonight, and I am sure you would have enjoyed the event more if he had been there.”

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Atonement: A Novel

Read: August 2024

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Atonement: A Novel

by Ian McEwan

Today, I started reading “Atonement: A Novel” by Ian McEwan, an acclaimed Booker Prize-winning author. This symphonic novel explores complex themes such as love and war, childhood and class, guilt and forgiveness. It has been recognized as one of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century, making it a must-read for those interested in these profound themes.

The story is set on a scorching summer day in 1935, where thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis witnesses a moment of flirtation between her older sister, Cecilia, and Robbie Turner, the son of a servant and Cecilia’s childhood friend. Briony’s incomplete understanding of adult motives and her literary gifts lead to a crime that significantly impacts their lives, taking them on an emotional journey of love, guilt, and forgiveness.

The narrative tracks the repercussions of this crime through the chaos and carnage of World War II, a vivid historical backdrop that immerses the reader into the twentieth century’s close. “Atonement” has been acclaimed for engaging readers on multiple levels, marking it a genuine masterpiece from the Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling author Ian McEwan.

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The Book of Love: A Novel

Read: March 2024

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The Book of Love: A Novel

by Kelly Link

I started reading “The Book of Love: A Novel” by Kelly Link today. The book showcases her exceptional writing skills, where she channels different forms of love, including friendships, romance, and family ties, with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary prowess. Readers can expect to experience joy, a little terror, and an affirmation that love endures despite challenges.

The story revolves around Laura, Daniel, and Mo, who mysteriously vanished from their hometown in Lovesend, Massachusetts, and were presumed dead. However, almost a year later, they find themselves in a high school classroom with their unremarkable music teacher. The teacher seems to know why they disappeared and what brought them back. They agree to undertake magical tasks to reclaim their lives, allowing them to return to their families and friends, but they can’t reveal where they’ve been. The tasks would lead to winners and losers.

Their resurrection attracts the attention of other supernatural beings with their agendas, which puts the community in danger and chaos. As Laura, Daniel, and Mo try to piece their lives together, and Laura’s sister Susannah tries to make sense of what she remembers, they must solve the mystery of their deaths to prevent a looming disaster.

The story takes place in Lovesend, where readers will experience love and loss, laughter and dread, magic, karaoke, and some delicious pizza.

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The Hero of This Book: A Novel

Read: November 2022

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The Hero of This Book: A Novel

by Elizabeth McCracken

The Hero of This Book: A Novel by Elizabeth McCracken is a searing examination of grief and renewal and a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. It is not a memoir but a remembrance of those we have lost. Ten months after her mother’s death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book takes a trip to London. The city was a favorite of her mother’s, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she reflects on her mother’s life and their relationship.

Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: Back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed.

The following quote resonated with me.

I’ve always hated the notion, in life or in fiction, that the human personality is a puzzle to be solved, that we are a single flashback away from understanding why this person is cruel to her children, why that man has a dreamy, downcast look. A human being is not a lock and the past is not a key.

I highly recommend this book.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary–her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will to seize life despite physical difficulties–and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured. Even though she wants to respect her mother’s nearly pathological sense of privacy, the woman must come to terms with whether making a chronicle of this remarkable life constitutes an act of love or betrayal.

The Hero of This Book is a searing examination of grief and renewal and a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents. What begins as a question of filial devotion ultimately becomes a lesson in what it means to write. At once comic and heartbreaking, with prose that delights at every turn, this is a novel of such piercing love and tenderness that we are reminded that art is what remains when all else falls away.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Losing Earth: A Recent History

Read: October 2019

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Losing Earth: A Recent History

by Nathaniel Rich

Losing Earth: A Recent History by Nathaniel Rich reminds us how close we were to halting the climate emergency, and our failure has resulted in our passing the tilting point. The book “reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil-fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence.”

By 1979, we knew nearly everything we understand today about climate change – including how to stop it. Over the next decade, a handful of scientists, politicians, and strategists, led by two unlikely heroes, risked their careers in a desperate, escalating campaign to convince the world to act before it was too late. Losing Earth is their story and ours.

The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue to Nathaniel Rich’s groundbreaking chronicle of that decade, which became an instant journalistic phenomenon – the subject of news coverage, editorials, and conversations all over the world. In its emphasis on the lives of the people who grappled with the significant existential threat of our age, it made vivid the moral dimensions of our shared plight.

Losing Earth tells the human story of climate change in even richer, more intimate terms. It reveals, in previously unreported detail, the birth of climate denialism and the genesis of the fossil-fuel industry’s coordinated effort to thwart climate policy through misinformation propaganda and political influence. The audiobook carries the story into the present day, wrestling with the long shadow of our past failures and asking crucial questions about how we make sense of our past, our future, and ourselves.

Like John Hersey’s Hiroshima and Jonathan Schell’s The Fate of the Earth, Losing Earth is the rarest of achievements: a riveting work of dramatic history that articulates a moral framework for understanding how we got here and how we must go forward.

Losing Earth is a must-read book!

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The Covenant of Water

Read: December 2023

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The Covenant of Water

by Abraham Verghese

Today, I began reading The Covenant of Water, the long-awaited new novel by Abraham Verghese, the author of the significant word-of-mouth bestseller Cutting for Stone, which has sold over 1.5 million copies in the United States alone and remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over two years. The Covenant of Water was a holiday gift from Mike, Elyssa, Nick, and Wes.

From 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast. It follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes throughout her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.

A shimmering evocation of a bygone India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and human understanding and a humbling testament to the difficulties undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today. It is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Regarding gifts made this month, I will match dollar for dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Organ Meats: A Nove

Read: November 2023

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Organ Meats: A Novel

by K-Ming Chang

I recently started reading ‘Organ Meats: A Novel‘ by K-Ming Chang. The story follows the journey of two best friends, Anita and Rainie, who find solace under the shade of an old sycamore tree and some stray dogs. The tree is believed to have the power to communicate with humans. As the girls explore their surroundings, they discover they are connected to a long line of dog-headed women and woman-headed dogs.

Anita convinces Rainie to become a dog like her, and they tie red string collars around their necks to symbolize their bond. However, their friendship is tested when they separate, and Anita enters a dream world. As Anita’s physical body begins to decay, Rainie takes it upon herself to rebuild her friend’s body and save her from being lost forever.

The story is filled with ghosts and vivid descriptions of the human body, portraying the beauty and horror of intimacy, all written in K-Ming Chang’s unique poetic style.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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