With and Without

Rhona sometimes used to say to me that, meeting me as she did when I was only twenty-five, she had had the best years of my life. Truer word was never, spoken. While she (to my life-long shame, remorse and regret) unquestionably had some of the worst of me, I like to think, I hope, that she also had, such as it is, all of the best of me. I was twenty-five, when we met and forty-six when she died. That's a hefty chunk of an important period of anybody's life and Rhona had it. For all its lows as well as highs, the downs as well as the ups, what else can you expect for two people together almost all the time for twenty-one years, what Rhona and I had, what we created, was a life. And she was, whatever anybody else says or thinks, despite my grievous mistakes, the center of mine. There are no perfect people in this world but sometimes, just sometimes, two people can be perfect for each other.