Never give away the things that you love.

Anything can happen at any time. My third wife for me was my most beloved, she was paralyzed from just below her breasts as the result of a gunshot accident. She was helping her friends grandparents move and while she was picking up a box in their garage her friend had grabbed an old shotgun that had been on a higher shelf. The gun was loaded and cocked, the result of an abandoned suicide that the grandmother had contemplated twenty years before.

We met and fell in love several years after that event and eventually she took her own life, she said it was because she didn't want to hold me back. The irony is that it was the single event that has crippled me ever since. She had one piece of advice in her letter, "Never give away the things that you love."

I have endlessly thought about these words ever since. The irony that she took herself from me. If you have ever loved anything at any time in your life, please keep it with you. I don't care if it's a YoYo from when you were a child, or an 82 Firebird that you couldn't afford at the time. If you still have a chance, go back and get them, and keep them close at all times, next to people, these little things are the most important things in your life.

Never give away your dreams they were put there for a reason, and never give away any of the things that you have ever loved. Hold them sacred, hold them dearly, surround yourself with all of these things. Photos, friendships, letters, and memories, and always keep them with you. Keep them where you can look back and remember. Be bold enough to be the only adult on the block to stand in the driveway jumping rope or rolling around in a pile of leaves... And never give away, the things that you love.


[edit on 22-12-2009 by factbeforefiction]