Song of My Life #1 I Can't Help Falling in Love

In yesterday's post, I talked about funeral songs and noted that there were 3 songs that seemed like songs that represented me and my life that may be funeral worthy.

Song of My Life #1: I Can't Help Falling In Love. . .

This song is first an appropriate tribute to my life with my Hubby, whom everyone who knows me knows I adore, and who boosts me and inspires me and loves me more completely than any other. It is also a tribute to my easy love for people. That is, I am someone who loves easily. I like that about myself. I think I get it from my dad who also loves quickly and fervently. And also from my mother who loves deeply and generously.

I introduced my best friend to everyone in my office once and afterward she cataloged who I liked and who I didn't. I was mortified! OMG! Am I that obvious about who I don't like??! How horrible! She quickly reassured me that it wasn't that I was rude to them, but that I was just effusive with the ones I did like--that I patted them and glowed and bubbled over with the things I appreciated and admired and loved about them.

Some people don't like this part of me or are uncomfortable with it. I have what they call a "big personality." I'm loud. I tell jokes during meetings. Like this very week, I leaned over in a meeting and whispered to someone who had just said something clever and who makes me laugh , "I need to work with you more often." When praise or despair comes to my mind, it gushes from my lips. (It is important to me to point out that I am blunt, forthright, and outspoken, but I am not mean.)

This trait of mine, this quickness to love, can lead to an apparent neediness that overwhelms some people. I can't get enough of the people I love. Once (OK, probably more than once.) I described my immediate connection with someone as wanting to crawl up in their lap. In early HS, this boy with deep brown eyes who was my dear friend sat in front of me in chemistry class and I stuck my hand on the back of his chair so he would lean against my skin, so I could feel him and connect with him all through class. He figured this out and let me even when we were angry with one another but he spat the words at me how pathetic it was. A lover told me once when I'd moved on to another. . .oh thank God you have someone else to take care of your needs. . .but can we still have sex?

Loving easily has also been a great boon in my life. I try not to let silly rules or pettiness keep me from loving. For instance, when my first grandchild was born, people said to me, "He is not really your grandchild, you know." (Technically, he's my step-grandchild, born of my stepson and his wife.)

I've witnessed people who live by this distinction. I have an aunt and uncle who clearly and continuously kept separate lines and distinctions between the children their son fathered and the ones he step-parented. For their blood grandkids, they bought gifts continuously, had them over to their house, designed bedrooms for them in their home, it goes on and on. For their stepsisters, whom their beloved granddaughter lived with, they did nothing--well, except criticize. All it did was cause pain all around. They couldn't see it. Why would anyone step away from--no, knock down--such easy love?

Loving a child is easy. They love you back so quickly. It's grand. My response to people who suggested I withhold my affections--or temper them in some removed "step" way--was just that. They may not be my blood, but I am claiming them whole hog. It doesn't matter how old I was when they came along; age doesn't matter. They are the only way I am having grandchildren, and I'm taking them, loving them as whole heartedly as possible. Please never let me step away from easy love.

Despite the unfilled hole it creates in me, I'm OK with the fact that I can't help falling in love. . .