They say your first love is always the most special. There is some truth to that and I hear it's more true for women. Your letter/poem was so sad and touching. After many years, for me anyway, that first real love faded into the past. I get a twinge of sadness when I think of her and I stop myself because I know the longing will still hurt. But that hurt has faded and there are more fresh hurts. But I remember many scattered moments of her company and can still see her sitting next to me, sun reflecting off her skin as she smiled and joked with me as we were driving. Your heart never forgets.

This is the very reason to be kind to the people we love. Sometimes really we love many. All of it is fragile and may be here one day and gone the next. How do we wish to be remembered? How are we certain we won't meet again in this life or the next?

The people we've loved who have slipped away for one reason or another...it hurts us. But we hold them in our hearts because they really were in there.
It is a great blessing that they are and also a difficulty. But, would we want it to be any other way?

Always treat love gently and with kindness, even as it goes away.