The face staring back at me is no longer one I recognize. Each line carved into my skin like a ravine through a dry plain, each crease at the corner of my eyes like paper folded inexpertly tell a story. My story.

I have earned these lines. I have purchased each of these creases in full. My eyes are watery, my sight has grown dim, and it feels like some days my body has as much metal as flesh and bone with an artificial hip and artificial knee. I have lived long and paid the price for my audacity in doing so.

There are days I can’t recall what my face looked like when I was young. Then there are days where it’s all I can see. My mind was the last thing to begin to fail me. I found myself lost in my memories. Sometimes speaking in hushed whispers to friends who live on only in the part of my mind still reliving the days of the past.

Except you.

You never strayed from my thoughts. Even 70 years gone, now, with this craggy face framed by wispy silver hair staring back at me in the mirror, you have ever been foremost in my mind and my reason to go on. You will always be young. Your face in my mind will never know wrinkles or lines and your hips and knees will always be 100% you. You will never know the pain of loss or the horror of seeing friends and family wither away to dust while you keep drawing breath, and your heart keeps beating.

For that, I am grateful.

I have been to many corners of this world. I have seen wonderous and terrible things. I have seen hope spring like flowers in the dry dirt of a village in Africa. I have seen the tragedies of war, and the horror of human suffering. I have seen the northern lights glimmering over the glinting, snow-covered fjords of Norway. I have seen the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans stretching out majestically beneath the giant silver bird carrying me to new places and new experiences.

And each has been for you and I. For us.

I want to have things I can tell you should we ever meet again. I want to be able to describe the Tower of London under a cloudy late day sun to you. I want to tell you tales of beautiful reunions and tragic separations I viewed through the lens of my camera. I want to regale you with tales of natural wonder and caution you with stories of manmade monstrosities. Human failings and human triumphs. I want you to experience things you never could. To show you a world you never got to see through my own experience.

My tomorrows have long been eclipsed by my yesterdays. Honestly, there’s a part of me which is shocked and a bit disappointed when my eyes open on the morning and I drag myself from the warmth of my small bed, feeling the chill settle in my bones like a physical thing. I have heard that any day spent above ground is a good day. I suppose I no longer believe that. The truth is that I am tired. I ache and I long to lay beside you once again.

The one constant has always been the inevitable truth present in the knowledge that the human mind cannot will the body to die and I have and continue to be far too cowardly to take matters in my own hands. I suppose in a very real way I should feel grateful for that fact. I would have done so many times over and never would have any stories to tell you.

It has been lonely without you through these long years, though. So terribly lonely.

I have family and friends. Many have left me. Probably more still have slept that I am not aware of. Each of their passings has left an indelible mark on my heart and soul. Each has left a scar I cannot be free of. At the end, it is just me, hobbling from my bedroom to my small kitchen where I try to warm these old bones with a cup of tea as I stare out the window at the birds flitting to and fro from the tree in the yard.

One day soon I will not have even that. My time is growing as dim as my eyesight, and I can only hope to sleep and not wake again when all is done without the horror and pain of a heart attack or stroke or any of the other unpleasantness accompanying the end of all our days. To do so would be a comfort. One I have prayed and continue to pray to whichever god may be listening was afforded you in your time.

I wonder sometimes when my mind is present and not wandering the fields and hills of the past where shadows of people I no longer recognize reside, what I will find. I have left specific instructions on where I am to be laid to sleep. I have had the small spot in the cemetery on the outskirts of a town I no longer have the strength to visit cleared and my space within its walls prepared. But what will be there?

What awaits me at the end of my final journey? Is the world beyond filled with a choir of angels? The hiss of boiling sulfur? Is it reincarnation to continue the trek toward enlightenment? Is it a step beyond a veil the living cannot see into something other? Is it simply darkness never ending? Is it nothing at all? An oblivion where we cease to be?

It is, I suppose that very question and the fear which goes along with it that often stokes the more religious to dive deep into the well of faith. Hopeful their diligence and piety will be rewarded with the first rather than the last. Personally, I’ve never felt any particular way about the end. Obviously, I wish to be with you. To spend my eternity with you. We had so little time and my soul cries out for more. But even if that is not to be, I know that at least I will sleep beside you once more at last. That knowledge is a panacea for all my worries religion and the angels cannot offer.

So, as the sun sets upon another day, diving like an Olympic medalist toward the distant mountain peaks, plunging my world once more into the purple half light between day and night, I settle down for another evening. How many evenings I have left I cannot know. But I draw comfort from the knowledge that each twilight that falls on me draws me one step closer to our reunion, in whatever form that takes.

I miss you, my love. I hope you will recognize me after all these years and that the lines time and experience and the elements have cut into my face and body do not frighten you as much as they do me. I am tired. So very tired. I want to sleep beside you once again and forever.