I wrote the dedication three days after she died, but could only read bits and pieces of it. For some, there is simply no such thing as “closure.” Some words have no meaning for me, like when the media states a soldier sacrificed his life overseas. In reality, he and his etire family were robbed. No sacrifice is involved.

Closure is for those who are willing to settle. Well, my wife, our children, our parents, our friends were all robbed, plain and simple.

The overall pain fades with time, but the loss remains sharp, as though it was yesterday.

My wife has dealt with MS for many years, but thank God her general health is good and she’s still managing to walk and pursue her career.

I like the ginger slices that come with sushi.

Give it a try, and let us all know. Results should be noticed within a few months.

Cheers

Seems you have had more than your share of hard times. Good to hear that you can deal with those heavy things in your work. I hope the heavy ones are outnumbered by lighter ones. I have always found that physical labor can be good for the soul. Back problems have ended that for me and I miss it.

Glad to have you back and I look forward to reading your posts. Keep us posted on your fiction. I look forward to it.

Is your new novel science fiction?

I am so sorry for the loss of your beloved.

Nice read and good to see you back at the HZ.

I always enjoy an adventure.

This is from a dedication to a rather large novel I’ve been working on. Some of you have read bits and pieces of it here, at the Zone.

Anyway, if you’ve got a moment:

To this author’s Aphrodite is this book dedicated, to the memory of Anita Bianca Bright, my wife and loving friend, my companion and mother of our children, and a living catalyst for so many grateful lives around her.

1.14.60 – 6.28.07

Growing up a naïve young man in the heart of Ohio, knowing a true desire to write, to see this vast world of ours, and to actually one day live in a dense jungle environment, I joined the US Army at the tender age of 20, in the summer of 1976, requesting that my first tour of duty be to the lush forests of the Panama Canal Zone. It was just a year later that I looked up from a pinball game at the Ft. Clayton snack bar and shopette (AKA Building 95), where I found the daughter of Eleanor and Guillermo Bright smiling so gloriously at me. The rainy season of Panama, 1977, was in full fury, and many of us were indoors, awaiting a break in the storms. Anita was just sweet-17, soon to be a senior at Balboa High School, when a member of her current “gang” of friends, a fellow young GI from my own company, had commandeered my Pronto One-Step camera, ostensibly to take some instamatic snap-shots of my back–for some unknowable, doubtless nefarious reason. She was gracious enough to snatch it away from him and return it to me, with full apologies. I looked into her lovely, brown eyes, saw her brilliant smile, her glowing nature, and decided then and there I was going to marry her. It was simply that sudden for me. Later, people would ask how we ever met, and I would jokingly reply that she had been some young jungle waif who had tried to steal my camera, and that I was still working on civilizing her.
Well, I followed this lovely tropical flower everywhere she went for four months (today, we call that stalking), and she just wanted me to leave her alone. The following year, on a bright June 24, 1978, First Sergeant Booker T. Poole marched Bravo Company, 4th Battalion (Mechanized) 20th Infantry Brigade down the road to the Ft. Clayton NCO Club, where Anita and I were happily joined as husband and wife. I’ll admit there was just a moment of hesitation for me, when she stated a desire to retain her maiden name, but I quickly realized how trifle a thing this was, so long as I had her.
After 14 years of military life together, now including three fantastic sons, we had traveled to many lands, moving bag, baggage and household as many as 10 to 15 times, eventually, in 1992, settling in Central Ohio. Joy, sadness, pain and pleasure, it was life, all shared, all survivable. There had been good times, tumultuous times, and even a short period of separation, where she did not wish to be with me any longer, but I could never let her go–and now I must.
In the winter of 1999, a quiet little virus visited our home, leaving behind a lovely young woman with chronic congestive heart failure. It was years later, on the morning of June 28, 2007, I readied myself for work and kissed her goodbye, as I had all our married life. She, still half asleep, patted my head and told me to “drive carefully,” as she always had, even when my journey might only involve a walk across the street to the barracks. I returned home at just after 4 PM, and found her still in bed, looking so lovely, I had to smile to her. Thinking she was just taking a nap from housework, I quietly changed clothes, then crawled softly on the bed and kissed her, when I found she had already left us.
There are no words that could ever fully explain the connection Anita and I shared. We seemed to argue about everything, though our devoted affection for each other was well known. We easily gave each other our own space, and all that required was for me to pick up a manuscript, kiss her on the cheek, and say, “I’m going out to write, honey.” She would then pat my cheek, and tell me to “drive carefully.” For Anita, her outlet was caring, with a ready shoulder to cry on, some tender, or not so tender advice, or a back, if you needed help with a load, be it material, or emotional. Someone would phone her with some dire emergency, and she would be out the door. “Gotta go, honey! Lesley needs me!” “Ruthy needs me!” “Esther needs me!” A neighbor would knock on the door, needing a ride somewhere, anywhere, even at 3 AM, and she just had to go. It really did not matter for whom an emergency existed; Anita lived her life on-call for anyone, with an understanding smile, a sincere hug, and a soft kiss on the cheek.
And there is no way for me to express her entire life, because so much of it involved the people she met at her own work, at the synagogue, or just around town, those I did not know at all, which resulted in the surprising, usually wonderful changes she brought to their lives. Rereading this story, though, I find a lot of my own gruff, though mildly cultivated personality in the characters of Tchrlok and Apollo, where Anita’s love, understanding, and tireless, critical devotion to reading material of all kinds could be found in the character of Aphrodite. In this manner, I hope to introduce you to just a tiny piece of the most wonderful woman I had ever had the pleasure of knowing, and been so fortunate to have met at the right time to claim her as my own, and to hold her so dear, even for the short time she was here with us. She was exactly what I had been searching for when I left home for Panama, so very long ago.

For Anita Bianca Bright
“It is a nice name. …Beautiful, in fact. It suits her.”

Please, do enjoy the adventure.
D. R. Spires