Every year I reprint this message from my friend Steve Brumfield. He wrote it after the death of his beloved wife Sue.
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I understand and am well aware that most of us do not want unsolicited advice, but would like to offer up some thoughts about my favorite holiday. . .Valentines Day.
For a number of years I would get Sue candy and flowers. She liked the candy. Did not like the cut roses, because they were cut. . .dead flowers to her. . .plus they charge you twice as much. So about ten years prior to her death, I started doing silly things. . .small things.
Our last Valentines’ day was Feb. 2007. For the previous ten years I had gotten her each year a stuffed singing something. . .one year it was a mouse dressed up in an evening gown with a little wig and microphone singing FEVER. Another year it was a Gorilla that sang WILD THING. And on and on. She liked some better than others. We saved them. In Feb. of ‘07 I got a bunch of stuff to decorate the mantle. Got a white shoe polish pencil so I could write things on the mirror in her bathroom and over the window above the kitchen sink. I got all the singing stuffed things out from previous years and put them on the mantle (at 2 or 3 in the morning). Put the latest addition, a dog that sang I CAN’T STOP LOVING YOU beside the coffee pot and a note telling her to go in and play cut six on the CD, a John Denver song, “For You.”
Generally, women appreciate thoughtfulness more than big gifts. . .at least in my case. On Valentine’s day ‘08 I thought back with fondness thinking that if I had known Valentine’s Day ‘07 would have been our last one, I don’t know what more I would have done. (but they do like big gifts every now and then.) Thoughtfulness cost less and is more appreciated with a big gift here and there along the way.
Steve