The Death of the Love of my Life

By Joseph P. Badame

This short story is an excerpt from the full book, “I Married my Teacher.” The story describes the last two days of a fifty-six year “affaire de coeur,” and the finality of the last hours spent with the person we care about more than ourselves. It is hoped that this rendition along with the full book will encourage couples to savor and enrich their precious time together since none of us knows how long that time will be. By doing so, lovers can assure themselves that they will not have any regrets when the time of parting is upon them.
The title, “The Death of the Love of My Life,” depicts an end to a boundless love affair. The book cover was meant to challenge that depiction. It illustrates the Nebula, “30 Doratus, the Tarantula Nebula” which is 170,000 light years away from our planet. The remarkable image was recently revealed to us by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Nebula is a nursery giving birth to billions of new stars, countless planets, and almost certainly the creation of new life. This marvel takes place among aging and dying stars that fuel the creation of their offspring. It is hoped that the symbolism can invoke the inspirational thought that while our loved ones have left this sublunary Earth, they now reside in a much more glorious place, free of the shackles of pain and disabilities. The sadness summoned by death is overshadowed by the end of suffering, a glorious life after death, and an anticipated sublime reunion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph P. Badame
• Release date: Jan 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310183751

Joseph P. Badame

Joseph Badame is a retired architect living in New Jersey. He is spending his remaining years working on projects to honor his late wife who was a master teacher. This book is one of his endeavors to pay tribute to her memory.

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The Death of the Love of My Life

© 2015 Joseph P. Badame

All rights reserved.

Written by

Joseph P. Badame

Smashwords Edition

First Edition

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Book design by Joseph P. Badame

I find my tired mind meandering as I age,

Contemplating my departure from life’s lonely stage.

Embracing yesterday with fondness, rebuffing tomorrow with dismay,

The present most often blurs, and becomes that yesterday.

My thoughts reside in the year of fifty-seven,

That glorious moment we found each other in our everlasting heaven.

But now that she is gone, never to return,

Awaiting our reunion, my broken heart will yearn.

The love of my life

Dedicated to the memory of

Phyliss Marie Crudo Badame

August 28, 1927 – October 29, 2013...)

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The Death of the Love of My Life

by Joseph P. Badame

The season was fall, a few days before Halloween and the beginning of my favorite and most joyous time of the year. Despite Phyliss’ ever-mounting hardships, and unlike the previous seven years, I was strangely welcoming the fall colors and spectacle of Halloween, the bounty and camaraderie of Thanksgiving, the joyousness and miracle of the birth of Christ . . . but not so much the anticipation of the events of the New Year.

I felt that three positive events out of four were better odds than Phyliss had been getting. I was comfortable with those odds. It finally appeared that Phyliss’ constant optimism and thirst for life had finally started to clear the perpetual, unbearable gloom that seemed to following me everywhere. I had been feeling like Linus in the Peanuts cartoon with my own dark cloud following me around above my head, always threatening to ruin my day with foul weather.

While Phyliss’ quality of life had remarkably improved since her brush with death almost two years prior, there loomed insurmountable conditions on the horizon that I tried, with limited success, to conceal from her.

Her brain tumor was now thirteen years old and had not been monitored for five years by the neurosurgeon. I think he believed she would not survive a corrective procedure in her condition. The cataract in her one, functioning eye was overdue for surgery, and the eye doctor was increasingly recommending that it be addressed. Her hearing left, returned very faintly, and now it seemed it was entirely gone forever. This was almost certainly a sign that the tumor had gotten much larger.

The numerous neuromas (tumors) on her spine were becoming less responsive to the pain medication; there was no other remedy for them. Moving Phyliss was becoming increasingly hazardous so as not to disturb or aggravate these tumors. There was a mild return of the reversal of day and night and occasional, but modest hallucinations at night. Her teeth were crumbling, and she was rightfully fearful of the scheduled surgery to remove seven of them at the end of the week. The surgery would necessitate stopping the Warfarin which prevented another stroke for almost two weeks – a real, but necessary gamble, if the surgery was to take place.

There were numerous other unthinkable problems. None had any permanent or favorable remedy, only the specter of getting worse, much worse. It was increasingly becoming more difficult to endure or even watch. It was probably more than she could ever endure. Even her bravery had its limits and certainly my limits had long since past.

It was not a future to look forward to with optimism and hope, and yet