To Carry that Sad Torch

I will always think about you, even if I live without you -song by Ronnie Rice and Leslie Kummel

Well that's how it goes and Joe, I know your gettin' pretty anxious to close
So, thanks for the cheer, I hope you didn't mind my bendin' your ear
This torch that I found must be drowned or it soon might explode
So, make it one for my baby and one more for the road
That long, long road - lyrics by Johnny Mercer

"Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!" - William Shakespeare -Romeo & Juliet

How many of us have carried a torch for a love?  All of us?  Unrequited?  Requited, but unsatisfying?

How about the kind of passionate infatuation that knocks us completely out of selves?

I was driving home from a wonderful date with with wonderful woman, while listening to heart wrenching phrasing and meticulous intonation of every syllable by the Swedish jazz genius Monica Zetterlund with  Jimmy Jones-p, Al Hall-trp, Milt Hinton-b, Bobby Donaldson-d.

Try this -


My God! I thought of my wife who went home to Christ in 1998 and how we met.  We in love think of having forever. Yeah, right.

I am blessed to know love again. Some people never have that.

Let's think about that and many people who never recovered from God's greatest gift to us - the unqualified love of another person.

Here's a few, real and imagined,  who carried that sad torch:

Don Quixote and Dulcinea
Katherine Hepburn for Spencer Tracy
Oscar Wilde for Lord Alfred Douglas
Dwight Eisenhower for Kay Summersby
Mark Antony for Cleopatra
Heloise and Abelard
Marilyn Monroe and my gender
King Arthur and Guenevere
Errol Flynn for Olivia de Havilland
Frank Sinatra for Eva Gardner

Love and lose. With God's grace alone we might win again.  Loneliness is a killer.

It makes some so unstable that they become stalkers.  It can paralyze an athlete and stultify a happy genius.


May sad songs be our limit.