Please, Stay With Me!

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes, 57 seconds

I Am OK, But I Live Alone

It was almost exactly five months after the Monarch dinner when Jan received the devastating diagnosis of lymphoma. As for me, I was still trying to find my footing as a man without a full-time day job. Suddenly, I was in the new caretaker role, where every day was challenging. My new position demanded my full attention, and I had to keep living one day at a time.

Jan’s voice, at the end of March 2021, trembled as she spoke, “Richard, promise me that you won’t spend the rest of your life alone if something happens to me.” She had returned from the hospital just two days ago after an extended stay, and her fragile state was evident. I couldn’t help but feel a sense of dread and fear creeping up inside me. I asked her if anyone would want an older man like me.

“Richard, you are a remarkable husband,” she said, “and I appreciate how much you care for me and how focused you are on my needs.” She then went on to talk about how much she enjoyed our moments of intimacy, causing my face to turn beet red with embarrassment. Jan proceeded to list several women that she believed loved me and would be willing to partner with me. She held my hand tightly as she spoke, and I could feel the warmth of her touch spreading through my body.

I interrupted her, trying to point out that most of the women she had mentioned were already married or had partners. But Jan was insistent that there might be others out there, even some I might not know, who would be interested in me. She looked at me with kind eyes, and I could see her love and compassion.

After Jan had fallen asleep in my arms, I gently rolled her over and left the bed. Her words about living with others struck a chord with me, even though I knew she was mistaken about the names she mentioned. Usually, I would have welcomed her advice, but at that moment, the thought of losing her to cancer was unbearable. I quietly left the room and went downstairs to cry. Through my tears, I kept reminding myself that love is the most potent force in the world. How can I go on without her? And can I truly live if I’m all alone?

Unexpectedly, two years after Jan’s death last year, I met someone online with whom I connected well. We talked through text messages and phone calls, and the interactions were so good that it felt like I was alive and in love again. I was excited about this new feeling and hopeful it would lead to something more. After Jan’s passing, I had come to terms with the idea that I might have to live alone forever, but this new connection gave me hope that I might not. However, things didn’t go as planned, and we eventually ended our relationship.

It was a moment that I will never forget. Something extraordinary happened when she reached out to me again. It was as if fate had intervened and brought us back together. I couldn’t tell if it was a dream during deep sleep or perhaps a reality that I was living in. She was hesitant about what she wanted to happen, but she was clear that whatever it was, it couldn’t be something she would regret.

Real or imaginary, I could feel my heart racing with excitement. Her presence was magnetic and pulled me toward her. Then, I remembered my wife’s voice telling me I needed love, not a warm body. I knew I had to make a decision.

As I gazed at her, I knew I had a decision to make. Should I indulge my urges and pursue a relationship with her, or should I uphold my commitments to my spouse to only love someone who could love me as much as I loved them and refrain? After careful thought, I ultimately chose the latter.

She might not have regretted it if we had been intimate, but I would have. It was a difficult decision, but I knew it was right. Sometimes, we must let go of what we want at the moment and focus on what is truly important in the long run.

Love Never Dies!

Jan, my wife, expressed her deep concerns about my living alone. But after losing her, I didn’t have any other option. Living alone has been daunting for me. As a widow, I have learned to manage my daily tasks, but it feels like I’m just going through the motions without any real purpose.

I often wonder if just performing these tasks is enough to feel alive. I feel like something is missing in my life, like a void that I cannot fill. Although I can continue living alone, the loneliness of widowhood can be overwhelming at times.

However, something happened recently that made me see life in a new light. I experienced a dreamlike event that made me realize that life is precious, even if challenging. I have decided to embrace life with all its ups and downs, even if I have to do it alone.

Yet, there is one thing that I yearn for the most. I long for love and intimacy. I want to share my joys, sorrows, and everything with someone who reciprocates my feelings. I am searching for a long-lasting relationship that can bring me happiness and contentment.

Finding true love may not be easy, but it is something that I need in my life now and for all the years to come. Love is a powerful emotion that never dies. Even though my wife is no longer with me, I know her love will always be in my heart.

I am not willing to settle for anything less than the best. Why should I compromise and accept less than the love and affection I once had? I want to open my heart to someone new and start a new chapter. I understand it won’t be an easy journey, but I am ready to embrace the challenge and hope to find the love I have been looking for soon. If I fail, I am confident I can live alone for the rest of my days and nights.


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Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea

Read: October 2023

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Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea

by Hannah Stowe

I recently started reading a book called “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” by Hannah Stowe. It’s a captivating book that immerses you in a world of water, whales, storms, and starlight, allowing you to experience what it’s like to sail for weeks and live life to a new rhythm.

Hannah Stowe, a marine biologist and sailor in her mid-twenties, grew up on the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, where she fell asleep to the sound of the lighthouse beam. Drawing upon her experiences sailing tens of thousands of miles in various seas, including the North Sea, North Atlantic, Mediterranean, Celtic Sea, and the Caribbean, she explores the human connection to the wild waters. Stowe ponders why she and others are drawn to life at sea and what we can learn from the water around us.

Stowe intertwines her narrative and illustrations with stories of six keystone marine creatures: the fire crow, sperm whale, wandering albatross, humpback whale, shearwater, and barnacle. Through these stories, she invites readers to fall in love with the sea and its inhabitants and to discover the majesty, wonder, and fragility of the underwater world.

If you enjoy the works of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard, then “Move Like Water: My Story of the Sea” is a must-read. It’s an inspiring and heartfelt tribute to the sea, a testimony to pursuing and achieving a dream, and an unforgettable introduction to a talented new nature writer.


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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Working

Read: October 2019

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Working

by Robert A. Caro

Working by Robert A. Caro is a book of evocatively written essays on his life and work. Among the many valuable words of wisdom is his case that one needs to look at every piece of information, not just what we know when we begin. Far too often, people jump to conclusions without having learned all of the facts.

He describes what it was like to interview the mighty Robert Moses and to begin discovering the extent of the political power Moses wielded; the combination of discouragement and exhilaration he felt confronting the vast holdings of the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas; his encounters with witnesses, including longtime residents wrenchingly displaced by the construction of Moses’ Cross-Bronx Expressway and Lady Bird Johnson acknowledging the beauty and influence of one of LBJ‘s mistresses. He gratefully remembers how, after years of working in solitude, he found a writers’ community at the New York Public Library, and details the ways he goes about planning and composing his books.

Caro recalls the moments at which he came to understand that he wanted to write not just about the men who wielded power but about the people and the politics that were shaped by that power. And he talks about the importance to him of the writing itself, of how he tries to infuse it with a sense of place and mood to bring characters and situations to life on the page. Taken together, these reminiscences–some previously published, some written expressly for this book–bring into focus the passion, the wry self-deprecation, and the integrity with which this brilliant historian has always approached his work.

I found this one of the best books I have read and recommend it to all readers.

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Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel

Read: October 2023

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Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel

by C Pam Zhang

Today, I commenced reading Land of Milk and Honey: A Novel by C Pam Zhang, the award-winning author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold; she returns with a rapturous and revelatory novel about a young chef whose discovery of pleasure alters her life and, indirectly, the world. With the arrival of forest fire smoke in my neighborhood, it seemed a timely book to read.

A smog has spread. Food crops are rapidly disappearing. A chef escapes her dying career in a dreary city to take a job at a decadent mountaintop colony seemingly free of the world’s troubles.

There, the sky is clear again. Rare ingredients abound. Her enigmatic employer and his visionary daughter have built a lush new life for the global eliteZhan, one that reawakens the chef to the pleasures of taste, touch, and her body.

The chef’s boundaries undergo a thrilling erosion in this atmosphere of hidden wonders and cool, seductive violence. Soon, she is pushed to the center of a startling attempt to reshape the world far beyond the plate.

Sensuous and surprising, joyous and bitingly sharp, told in language as alluring as it is original, Land of Milk and Honey provocatively bare the ethics of seeking pleasure in a dying world. It is a daringly imaginative exploration of desire and deception, privilege and faith, and the roles we play to survive. Most of all, it is a love letter to food, wild delight, and the transformative power of a woman embracing her own appetite.


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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The Midnight Bargain

Read: February 2022

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The Midnight Bargain

by C.L. Polk

The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk is about Beatrice Clayborn, a sorceress, who was the next book to read. She practices magic in secret, terrified of being locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do. Still, her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborn’s are in severe debt, and only she can save them by securing a good match before their creditors call.

In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice’s first kiss . . . with her adversary’s brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.

The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is, but if she marries—even for love—she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?

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Flight: A Novel

Read: January 2023

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Flight: A Novel

by Lynn Steger Strong

Flight: A Novel by Lynn Steger Strong is a novel about family, ambition, precarity, art, and desire, forming a decisive next step from a brilliant chronicler of our time. The book has been on my to-read list for a few months. A New Yorker Best Books of 2022, it seemed like a good start on my 2023 Goodreads Reading challenge. Flight is the first book I read in 2023. Last year I read seventy-four books, and each helped me with my grief journey.

I recommend this novel as it is a page-turner highlighting the difficulty families experience after a loss. As a culture, we are experiencing declining social connections, including within families. Flight is an excellent effort to define the crisis.

Although several possible resolutions to the conflict became clear by the middle of the novel, Ms. Strong told the story so that until the end, it was unclear how or if it would be resolved. In addition, enough unresolved issues remained so that.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

It’s December twenty-second and siblings Henry, Kate, and Martin have converged with their spouses on Henry’s house in upstate New York. This is the first Christmas the siblings are without their mother, the first not at their mother’s Florida house. Over the course of the next three days, old resentments and instabilities arise as the siblings, with a gaggle of children afoot, attempt to perform familiar rituals, while also trying to decide what to do with their mother’s house, their sole inheritance. As tensions rise, the whole group is forced to come together unexpectedly when a local mother and daughter need help.

With the urgency and artfulness that cemented her previous novel Want as “a defining novel of our age” (Vulture), Strong once again turns her attention to the structural and systemic failings that are haunting Americans, but also to the ways in which family, friends, and strangers can support each other through the gaps


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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Sarah's Key

Read: January 2022

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Sarah’s Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay is the untold story of the roundup of the Jews in Paris in July 1942. The novel focuses on how the French were complicit in rounding up thousands of Jews in 1942. It is also a reminder that we can never allow another genocide. I finished this book the day before Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, the date on which the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and death camp complex was liberated in 1945.

Ten-year-old Sarah is brutally arrested with her family in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, the most notorious act of French collaboration with the Nazis. But before the police come to take them, Sarah locks her younger brother, Michel, in their favorite hiding place, a cupboard in the family’s apartment. She keeps the key, thinking she will be back within a few hours.

Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s sixtieth anniversary, Julia Jarmond, an American journalist, is asked by her Paris-based American magazine to write an article about this black day in France’s past. Julia has lived in Paris for nearly twenty-five years and married a Frenchman, and she is shocked both by her ignorance about the event and the silence that still surrounds it.

The twin narratives of Sarah and Julia hold the first two-thirds of the book together and make it a page-turner. Sarah’s memory reminds us during the final third of the book and ensures that the complete story of the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup and its lasting impact are told.

As Goodreads describes the novel,

In the course of her investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connects her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl’s ordeal, from the terrible days spent shut in at the Vel’ d’Hiv’ to the camps and beyond. As she probes into Sarah’s past, she begins to question her own place in France and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.

Writing about the fate of her country with a pitiless clarity, Tatiana de Rosnay offers us a brilliantly subtle, compelling portrait of France under occupation and reveals the taboos and denial surrounding this painful episode in French history.

I highly recommend the book.

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