Freedom is a curse

Never ever free me from these memories.

Do you remember your first love?

I fell in love for the first time many times!

There was the girl that held my hand when we were singing in class, I had short trousers then.

Then there was Fay in the springtime, who accepted a trinket of my love but was gone by summer.

I always walked Jeannie to the bus after school and loved her freckled nose and the secret kiss by the swings.

Now my real first love was Irene who laughed at my impudence but scorned my affection and left me heartbroken.

Kathleen was the one that took me home and showed me to her parents and gave me tea and cakes and sat me in the front room and walked in the woods with me and then gave me up for one she really loved and broke my heart...again.

Dare I tell you about Enid the beautiful muse who was a friend but I couldn’t see she was the one that loved me until we parted when I fell into an abyss of despair and like Orpheus I searched everywhere for her and would even have followed her through the gates of hell if I had known where that was!

But fickle I was as man and youth and my heart had an enormous capacity to love. All these loves and more came into my life and each one was set free by me or by their own wisdom.

Even you my love who loved me constantly from youth to manhood through adventure and pain, through sadness and joy, through babies and children and grandchildren you left me too.

You left me, never to be free of all these loving memories and I would wish it no other way.