Letters to Prince

Letters to Prince, Chapter 4

Valentine's Day

My Dearest Prince,

Today is Valentine's Day, a man made holiday that celebrates love. Hallmark Cards I am sure had a lot to do with its creation, but many people enjoy it so I guess it is a good thing. I have not enjoyed it for many years. It only served to bring my loneliness and hopeless feelings of being unloved and unwanted to the surface to cause me pain. I used to anguish over not having a date and then not having love after my divorces and would go to the church's Valentine's gatherings which were more than sad. Typically people who were my age now were the one's in attendance then. Lonely people like me only at the time, I was much younger, in my early 30's. That was some 30 years ago and nothing changed except, I became an older, lonelier version of myself. I stopped trying to date and stopped trying to do anything but work many years ago. It was the only thing that I seemed to be able to do well and while the accomplishments from it no longer gave me a high and heady feeling, it did at least give me a sense of being productive and kept me from falling into total depression.

I don't remember exactly when I realized how much my life had in common with your own. Clearly not the external trappings of it, but more the interior landscaping of our lives was similar. We were both accomplished at what we did, both highly attractive people according to the world's perception, we both had so much to live for, and yet we were both lonely to the point of an internal death. You had more women than most men would have in many lifetimes, but you remained lonely and unconnected until your death. I had more than my share of men, but accepted those that were not worth much until I could not stand them anymore and then would find someone equally as worthless, the tapes of abandonment screaming in my brain from childhood where I was abandoned emotionally by both of my parents, an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother, neither of whom knew that I existed until the other would wander off for a time on a binge and then I was blamed for their absence and beaten and brow beaten until I wished only to escape by any means possible. I was 12 years old.

I had fallen in love with your music and the beauty of your soul that it revealed years before I knew that I had truly fallen in love with you. I was not a typical groupie who hung around your concerts trying to make contact with you, nor did I travel to your home to try to catch glimpses of you. Rather, I listened to your lyrics as though they were conversations with me and I found in you a man who knew great sorrow and pain and yet still believed in finding joy in some manner with the help of God. You saw love and sex and God as being so connected that they were in some ways the same...and I related not always agreeing but understanding why you felt as you did. You spoke my life in your lyrics, my entire existence you understood because you had lived it...were living it and I fell deeply in love with you, the man behind the words and the amazing melodies. The man who despite his pain, still believed in life long love even if he could not experience it personally.

Today, I am very sick. The bronchitis I came down with has not healed despite two different types of antibiotics and steroids. I am beginning to think my time is not long on this earth and I still hope to see you as I move into the light at some point. I just hope that somehow you know that despite all that I have been through, the fact that it led me to love you, to truly see you and understand the source of your great longing for closeness despite your fear of it has made all of my pain mean something. Loving someone without reservation even when one is not loved back has great value. It makes you smile even when your eyes cry. It makes you remember in the ashes of your being that you are really and truly still alive. It makes me grateful to have lived during the time that you did and to have known for myself the way that your music and words uplifted my soul with hope. It has given my tears meaning as they were cried for someone of great value to me and to the world.

Happy Valentine's Day Prince.

I love you and I always will,

Marie

Marie opened the valise in which she kept her letters to Prince and kissing his name on this most recent one, she carefully folded it and placed it into the valise with the treasured others. How she loved and missed this man. With a little sigh she zipped the valise and placed it back into the bottom drawer of her desk.