Small Moment: "I Love You More"

Warren and I ran an early morning errand today and when we got back to Delaware, I told him to just park his car in his usual spot (a half block or so from his office) and I would walk to work (a block and a half) from there. As I started to cut across the Justice Center parking lot, I called over my shoulder, "I love you!" With a smile that could have been a wink, Warren called back, "I love you more."

Oh my. That was a hand-to-my-heart moment. "I love you more" is how my beloved Aunt Ginger and I always took leave of one another, with each of us often trying to top the other:

"I love you."

A moment with Aunt Ginger and a very young Ramona (2014)

"I love you more."

"Well, I love you more than that."

"I love you all of that and even more on top of that!"

Even in her last months, when the dementia was starting to take its toll, Ginger would remember to say "I love you more" when it came time for me to leave.

Ginger has been gone now for a little over nine months. I visit her grave occasionally, and noted to Warren when I came back last time that we need to seed her grave this fall or spring as the grass put down by the cemetery crew did not come in well (and it has been such a dry summer the last several weeks that nothing would take right now). I have some photos of her in my study, and a memento here and there.

But mostly I have my memories, over six decades of them. As I noted when she turned 80, Ginger was a key part of my life always.

And today Warren called her response to me, deliberately invoking her. That's what his smile was about. And after I blinked the tears out of my eyes. I looked to the skies and said out loud, "I love you, Aunt Ginger."

"...and I miss you."