You were, are, and always will be the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.

There is no second place, not a moment of anyone else.

Almond eyes that made my legs buckle, lips from venus,  cheekbones that reached the cosmos. Even those fat, funny knees you hated.

When we were dating, six of us would hang.  Mike, Pancho, Doug, Fax, Harvey.  When you’d come by, behind your back, my friends would sing Jimmy Soul; ”If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. …”

Our Brandeis rating scale, pre-dating Bo Derek, graded from twelve (our mostly jewish, co-ed classmates, who were serious, strident, bright, and inevitably grossly unnattractive) to one.  A ONE was the incredibly rare, phantom knockout we always discussed and dreamed of meeting.   Everyone agreed you were A ONE.   Your friends were beautiful too, but you were exquisite.   And you rendered me hunk status.  My friends and female acquaintances assumed I was a top notch ladies man, otherwise how could I get a stunner like you?

And how could a shloomp like me get a stunner like you?  I still wonder.

We were opposites.  Your mom said it’d never work.  My mom had serious doubts.

You went to your straight, co-op, working class school.  i was at an intellectual, hippie, pretentious commune.  You had my uncle gene;  i had maslow and tuesdays with morrie (an awful teacher).

You had always worked and paid your own college bills.  You were amidst your student teaching.  i was on probation for skipping entire courses.  You had three jobs; Filene’s, Suffolk-Franklin, Northeastern Electrical Engineering.  If i needed money i just asked my mom or financial aid for a bigger scholarship.  Pancho,  Mike, and i shared cytology labwork, just a few hours a week, for more than you ever made.

You were always positive, accommodating, smiling.  Me, negative, rebelling.  You, impeccably fashioned.  Me, leather jacket, torn jeans.  You wrote down every penny.  I didn’t care.  You were incessantly gregarious and loved people.  I was a statue.

My friends’d sleep over boston garden for tickets to go nuts for bobby.  You’d sit in the balcony, in overtime,  reading agatha christie.

You loved john denver, simon & garfunkel, norman greenbaum(norman greenbaum?), and neil diamond.  I was doors, janis, beatles, stones.  i desperately stood in line with my dream entry to the stones lottery at midnight in post office square.  I got nothing.  You got tickets; you took someone else.

We always were opposites.

We argued over everything.  e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g.  And did, for 41 years.

Those last few days, in horrible pain,  you’d say you wanted me to agree to let you go.

I just couldn’t.