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    In Love
    In Love
    In Love
    Ebook113 pages1 hour

    In Love

    By Gary Littman

    ()

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    About this ebook

    In the 1960s a rock group called The Youngbloods produced a song titled Get
    Togetherthe content of this book is a reflfl ection of a lyric within that songthe
    words are: We are but a moments sunlight fading in the grass.
    No words can better describe the lives of two people falling in love and going
    through lifes journey experiencing both good times and tragedies. This book is
    an amazing story of true and enduring love. Life is like a book with a beginning,
    middle, and ending, and this story has all of those elements.
    For those people who are in love or are about to fall in love, this book is a way
    to fifi nd out what it means to be truly In Love. It is a view into the minds of two
    people who, through their baby boomer time line, build family, careers, friendships,
    and battle unforeseen events that change and rock their world. It is a way
    to show how love, devotion, and caring can make life worth living even through
    the roughest times.
    For those who have already read this book, the reviews have been ones of emotion,
    self-reflfl ection, and revelation.
    Comments have been:
    A must read for the Baby Boomer Generation.
    Fantastic.
    An accurate time line covering forty years,
    I couldnt stop crying.
    My life is similar to yours.
    I didnt know love could be so wonderful.
    How did you get through life with all the bombs going off around you?
    Although this book discusses events from the 1960s through the present, the
    story told crosses all generations, past, present, and future. The theme of love is
    timeless and the people in the book can be you, relatives, or neighbors.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAuthorHouse
    Release dateOct 24, 2012
    ISBN9781477276587
    In Love

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      Book preview

      In Love - Gary Littman

      © 2012, 2014 Gary Littman. All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

      Published by AuthorHouse 12/27/2013

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7660-0 (sc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7659-4 (hc)

      ISBN: 978-1-4772-7658-7 (e)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2012918327

      Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

      and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

      Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

      Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

      Contents

      Preface

      Introduction

      Chapter 1       Dreaming

      Chapter 2       1969-1972: The College Years

      Chapter 3       1973-1974: Life Changes

      Chapter 4       1975-1979: Sharing Love

      Chapter 5       1980-1983: Dreaming Again

      Chapter 6       1984-1992: Life and Death

      Chapter 7       1993-1998: Life Continues

      Chapter 8       1999-2006: Life and Death Continue

      Chapter 9       2007-2008: Tragedy

      Chapter 10       Reflection and Life after Tragedy

      About the Author

      Preface

      T HIS BOOK is a testament to the memory of my late wife, Joyce, who passed away after a valiant fight against terminal cancer. Her impact on my life and those of my three children is summed up in the following letter that Joyce tearfully dictated to a nurse just prior to her death:

      Dear Gary,

      I try so hard to hang on, but I cannot go on anymore. It is beyond torture for me. I cannot even breathe. There is no reason to continue with such pain. I need to end this; there is no doubt. I don’t know why the doctors are giving me such medicine to create this kind of pain. I can’t bear it. I love you so much. I lived my whole life loving you more than anything, and now I am so worried that I don’t even have time to finish this letter so you’ll know how much I love you. Now I need to end this because it is positively unbearable. I hope you can be strong for the kids. They need you.

      Love always,

      Joyce

      This letter shows how much love Joyce and I shared throughout our romance together. Even when facing death, her thoughts centered on our love affair with each other and her devotion to our children.

      Introduction

      T HIS BOOK is a timeline of events, both wonderful and turbulent, that happened throughout a relationship that lasted forty years. It is not to be construed as a book of praise and adulation but as one that shows the caring and thoughtfulness that two individuals who come together can share over a lifetime.

      After being with a person for so many fulfilling years, it is difficult to imagine that person’s sudden vanishing. The emptiness and void that accompany the death of a loved one can be understood only by those who have lived to tell how it feels. Even then, it is sometimes difficult to describe all the feelings and confusion that take place.

      The chapters that follow try to piece together the world as I saw it from 1968 to the present. It is ironic that the year 1968 had so many negative aspects to it, yet in that year I found happiness that would last in my memory forever.

      The In Love story begins.

      Chapter 1

      Dreaming

      I T WAS a beautiful Thursday afternoon in the spring of 2008. My wife and I were holding hands and looking into each other’s eyes. I loved Joyce’s crystal blue eyes, beautiful blond hair, and soft skin. She looked like an angel to me, with all of her beauty and softness so apparent to anyone who looked at her. We were comfortably sitting in stately leather chairs in a place of life and death—an oncologist’s treatment room, which seemed to be magical and terrifying. The smell of medicines, the surreal scene of other patients’ getting treatments, and the medical staff trying to do their tasks seemed so unreal to me. Joyce started to sleep under the influence of heavy-duty chemotherapy medications, and my fear that the drugs were not working combined with my thinking about the sweet past weighed heavily on my mind. We continued holding hands, and I started to stroke her hand gently to comfort her. As I touched her hand, it began to shake and became very cold, the effects of the awful drugs that were causing her to suffer so much. I remember missing the warmth of her skin and its tenderness. I didn’t know how to react in this situation. The only way for me to survive was to recall the past. I began to daydream.

      My dreams were so vivid that they seemed real. I began to go back in time forty years to remember all the events in our lives that would eventually lead us to this moment of hope and despair.

      My mind drifted back to events starting in 1968, a year of change not only for me but for the country as a whole. The Vietnam War continued to escalate and take its toll on the youth of America. The Tet Offensive, the My Lai massacre by United States troops, failed peace talks in Paris, the end of the Johnson presidency, and the beginning of Richard Nixon’s ascent to power were changing the American landscape that baby boomers had grown up with.

      The Vietnam War was a source of both concern and conflict in many households. In my own home, my father was a World War II veteran. His view of America was shaped by the war he had fought in. He and I engaged in many arguments about the justification of the Vietnam War. He would never back down and didn’t want to listen to the truth. My dad was a very decent and honorable man; however, he never wanted to hear that his country could be wrong. My mother, on the other hand, knew I was right and agreed with me that the war should be stopped. The truth is that she didn’t want me to be drafted. As in most households, the Archie Bunker pro-war mentality ruled. In my home, I was the Meathead, or Michael Stivic, who represented the anti-war movement of our generation in the television sitcom All in the Family.

      The assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. contributed to the era of violence. Our nation was rocked by the loss of these two leaders, adding fuel to the fires of the antiwar and civil rights movements. The Civil Rights Bill passed under President Johnson proved to be a needed step forward not only for blacks in America but also for the country as a whole.

      Music in America was rapidly changing to reflect the mood of the country’s young people. Different genres of music developed, with peace as their central theme. Songs ranged from those of the Beatles’ supreme reign to the acid rock of Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride and the wonderful sound of Cream’s White Room. The Supremes’ song Love Child talked about an illegitimate child and the poverty often associated with that situation. Songs like Hey Jude, People Got to Be Free, Mrs. Robinson, Light My Fire, Born to Be Wild, Midnight Confessions, Mony, Mony, and Lady Willpower were hot on the music charts.

      So there I was—a seventeen-year-old, clean-cut Brooklyn boy of medium height, raised in a conservative Jewish household with some sprinklings of Orthodoxy. My father had worked for General Motors since coming out of the army and had learned most of his skills while in the service. I had a brother who became a New York City teacher. Teachers were in short supply, and such a position offered a continued military deferment. For this reason, teaching was an attractive occupation for men who wanted to avoid going to Vietnam.

      We lived in a two-family house in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn, with primarily Italian and Jewish populations. Academically, I was an above-average student. I was in honors classes with an A average in high school, and in 1968 I was accepted to the City College of New York, commonly known as the poor man’s Harvard. As a tuition-free school, it was certainly attractive to my parents, who did not want to absorb any costs related to sending me to a state or private institution. Attending the City College of New York was certainly going to be an out-of-town experience since it was located in Spanish Harlem, far from the Brooklyn neighborhood where I grew up. A ride on the A train to 125th Street would be an adventure. Like most young students, I did not have a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up.

      As September 1968 approached, I was becoming increasingly apprehensive about attending college. I received an invitation to attend the college orientation and began to understand that there was no way out of it. All through my academic life, I had been afraid of failure. Failure had never come to pass, but going to college energized my negative thoughts. As the orientation day approached, my mother was increasingly reassuring that everything would be okay. The meeting day arrived, and my parents drove me to CCNY. They were somewhat disappointed with the surrounding neighborhood and were concerned about my safety, but somehow they concluded that everything would fall into place

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