Best One Out There

I love Valentine's Day. I know people complain that it's just another Hallmark holiday, but I think it's pretty damn awesome that there's a holiday all about celebrating love. If you want to skip the commercial part, just spend time with your significant other and don't buy anything. And I've got to say, please don't be one of those Bitter Betties that hates Valentine's Day when you're single but skips around in a love-drunk haze of roses and chocolate on the years you have a beau. If you're going to hate it, at least be consistent. And if you know you only hate it because you're lonely this year, keep it to yourself and don't crap all over every happy couple's love parade.

My grandma lost her Valentine six years ago. She and my grandfather lived in neighboring apartments on Thomas Circle when they met, and got married a few months later. She was twenty, he was twenty-five. I was worried she might be missing him more than usual, so I called her up last Tuesday. We ended up talking for an hour and a half. At one point in the conversation, she mentioned a conversation with a friend about how horribly lonely it is to be the spouse left behind. Her friend asked if she would ever consider finding someone else.  She said she thought for a minute, and said, "No, because I would always be comparing. I think I really found the absolute best one out there on my first try. No one else could even come close."

After sixty years of marriage, to feel that utterly in love with someone? That's what I'm holding out for.