Sometimes I think writing a blog is nothing more than the self-absorbed narcissistic ramblings of a socially awkward individual, which then inhibits me, and brings me to a screeching halt. Writing a blog is somewhat akin to a verbal form of the “selfie”, which after some thought, gives me a nasty case of the heebie-jeebies. But when I remember that no one actually reads my blogs, it allows me to dance like nobody’s watching….. so to speak. So here go I.

I turn sixty in less than a month. Do you hear that? I’m shouting it out here in cyber space in an attempt to embrace it.

Sixty…….. Jesus, how did that happen, and so fast?

Sixty is officially old. Over the hill. No matter which way you slice or dice it, it is inescapably the stuff of serious contemplation. This is the age when women become invisible. I have a friend who is seven years my junior, and she claims that men haven’t given her more than a cursory passing glance in years, and to think that at one time she was serious fodder for many a young man’s nocturnal fantasies.

I’m pretty sure my “relationship” years are well behind me, so I don’t really care if I become invisible to “los hombres”. The other night I dreamt I was getting married to a man I barely knew, and I was in full panic mode. The thought of being tethered to another human being at this stage in my life makes me feel like someone is syphoning all the air out of my lungs. I awoke in a cold sweat. “Praise be to God” I intoned to Gus the cat, after realizing it was only a dream.

He blinked twice and then drifted back into the blissful slumber I had just hi-jacked.

Here’s the thing. I’m a dyed in the wool romantic. I actually love the idea of love. Two soul mates falling in love and growing old together. What can be more beautiful than that? As a concept it’s flawless and beautiful. In reality, it’s messy and noisy, and a steep climb that leads not to a beautiful summit as one might imagine, but rather to a low lying valley prone to floods, and the occasional earth quake. It’s a grenade laden realm, people.

Amor for me is much like flying a kite. I have always been enamored with the idea of launching a kite, and having it remain aloft, floating lazily above the tree-line and soaring amongst the clouds and God’s sweet angels. However in reality, whenever I’ve actually attempted to fly one of those bad boys, it has lulled me into a sense of fleeting joy by catching an updraft and briefly surfing on the wind before losing its momentum and nose diving into the ground.

Totally anti-climatic, and an apt metaphor for describing most of my relationships.

In my own defense, I was raised on bed-time stories that always ended with “And They Lived Happily Ever After”. I grew up with the notion that love conquered all, and that no effort at all was required to keep the love fires stoked and burning merrily on the hearth. Imagine my sense of betrayal when I learnt that Happily Ever Afters were nothing more than today’s urban legends, and more accurately, outright big fat fibs.

It was either intensive therapy, or learning to sooth my thwarted and romantic soul by living vicariously through movies, and more recently, the novels I’ve been writing. In writing ” Beneath a Judas Moon” I was able to channel the protagonist, “Anya”. Through her, I loved Samuel, an inadvertent and fictional creation of my ideal “soul mate”. After completing the book, the uneasy notion that he was out there somewhere, waiting and looking for me, stayed with me. I found myself searching for him in a sea of anonymous faces.

In moments of reverie, I am forever tossing hay bales with Samuel in the moonlight and taking turns driving the tractor. I am stealing out of bed in the dead of the night and climbing onto his lap in order to star gaze. I am dancing with him to the Troggs, barefoot on the lawn, twirling in the spot-light cast from the truck’s head-lights, and wearing the blue summer dress he bought for me at Christmas. I am riding horses with him in the valley of Dry Island Buffalo Jump, while he regales me with childhood stories about growing up as a Hutterite on the Burnt Grass Colony in Kneehill County.

So here’s something odd…… While I was writing this blog, I went to get a coffee and upon returning to my desk clicked into yahoo to check my mail. This is the first thing I saw.

“A devoted English couple died just 10 minutes apart after a 65-year romance that started in their teen years. In their final days, Harry and Mavis Stevenson had been living in St. Werburgh’s House Care Home in Derby because she had fallen ill and they could not stand being apart. The Stevensons’ family was not surprised when Mavis passed away on Nov. 3 at 89 but was shocked when her 88-year-old husband — who was in good health — shed a few tears and died by her side just minutes later, according to local media. “Their love lasted and they were devoted to each other. I can imagine them being together now, after their death, side by side,” the couple’s nephew Stephen Cresswell, 63, told the Derby Telegraph. Harry and Mavis met at the Asterdale social club before Harry joined the Royal Marines in 1943.

He stormed the beach at Normandy on D-Day to help liberate continental Europe from Hitler’s clutches and was shot in the hand while battling the Japanese in the Pacific theater, the local paper said. But perhaps the most significant pain came from being apart from Mavis, who was waiting for him back in the United Kingdom. Cresswell thinks his uncle’s service in World War II made their bond much deeper.

“Their romance and their love kept them together during those years. When there is absence, then the heart grows stronger,” Cresswell said. Harry and Mavis got married after he returned home, and they tried to minimize their time apart as much as possible — even after she got sick later in life. Cresswell said the nurses told Harry that she had died, then they walked out of the room, only to find him dead minutes later, the Daily Telegraph reported. They were, he said, “soulmates.”

So there you have it. As they say, there are no coincidences in life. Go figure.