A Veterans Day Tribute to My First Love, My First Best Friend!
November 11, 2026 | Veterans Day
I haven't posted anything in a few days. I've been mourning. I've been trying to process a loss that my heart hasn't quite figured out how to accept. I've been sitting with memories, regrets, unanswered questions, and a thousand different emotions that seem to arrive all at once.
But today is Veterans Day, November 11, and no matter how heavy my heart is, I couldn't allow this day to pass without recognizing a veteran, a friend, and a man who has held a very special place in my heart for nearly 40 years.
For 40 years, I've loved this man.
And when I say loved, I mean through the years, through the changes, through the distance, through the disagreements, through the misunderstandings, and through all the versions of ourselves we became along the way.
In love and in life, we just couldn't seem to get it right.
Our communication was often unspoken. So much was left between the lines, buried beneath pride, circumstances, assumptions, and the weight of everything life had thrown at us. We had a language of our own, but sometimes even that wasn't enough to help us understand one another. Our shared history, our childhood, our individual struggles, and the adversity we experienced became the complicated foundation of a bond that neither of us ever quite knew how to navigate.
Perhaps we loved each other through our wounds as much as we loved each other through our hearts.
Whatever you want to call it, trauma bond, unfinished business, first love, or a connection that time simply couldn't erase, one thing I know for certain is that the love was real.
It was ours. And in the moments when we got it right, it was something beautiful.
I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how this could have happened. How someone with so much promise, so much personality, and so much life left to live could suddenly be gone.
There was a big love inside that man. A quiet, genuine, sometimes unspoken love that I believe he carried with him even when neither of us knew how to express it properly.
And there are things he said about me, things he believed about me, that I know were true from his perspective. The circumstances surrounding those truths, the things we misunderstood, and the conversations we never managed to have are things I wish we could have sat down and talked about.
I wish I could have explained.
I wish I could have listened better.
I wish we could have put our pride aside.
I wish we had given ourselves the opportunity to understand one another without the interference of everything that had happened between us.
For that, I am truly sorry.
What breaks my heart most is knowing that he left this world with misunderstandings between us, with things unresolved, and perhaps without knowing the depth of the love I continued to carry for him.
There is something particularly cruel about death when there are still conversations you were planning to have. When there are apologies you thought you had more time to offer. When there are explanations you assumed would eventually find their way into the right moment.
I never imagined that our opportunity to make peace would disappear so suddenly.
My love for him grew with every passing year. It began when we were children, when the world was simpler and we had no idea what life had waiting for us. And somehow, as life became more complicated, more demanding, and more intense, that love became even deeper.
We could be angry with one another. We could go our separate ways. We could experience other relationships, meet other people, and try to build lives outside of the history we shared.
But there was always that little piece of my heart that belonged to him.
That's the thing about first love. People often talk about it as though it's just a childhood memory, something sweet that you eventually outgrow. But sometimes your first love becomes part of your life story in a way that no amount of time can rewrite.
You can love other people. You can experience companionship, passion, commitment, and even believe you've found the greatest love of your life.
But there is something about the person who knew you before the world had a chance to change you. The person who remembers the little girl you were, the dreams you had, the things you said, and the person you were becoming.
That connection is different.
And no matter how much time passes, some people never become strangers to your heart.
I don't know what our story would have looked like if we had made different choices. I don't know what might have happened if we had communicated differently, forgiven sooner, or simply allowed ourselves to be vulnerable enough to say what we really felt.
There are so many could-haves, would-haves, and should-haves that I could spend a lifetime standing in the middle of them.
But I do know this: I loved him. I loved him then, I loved him through all the years in between, and I love him now.
And today, on Veterans Day, I want to honor more than the memories of a childhood sweetheart. I want to honor the man himself.
Thank you for your service. Thank you for your sacrifices, your dedication, and the courage it takes to serve something bigger than yourself. Thank you for the ways you showed up for your country, your family, your friends, your colleagues, and the people whose lives you touched.
Your service was part of your story, but it was not the entirety of who you were. You were someone's son, someone's family, someone's friend, someone's brother in arms, and you were my first love and my first best friend.
You mattered. Your life mattered. Your presence mattered. And the love you left behind matters, too.
I wish I could tell you all of this while you were still here to hear it.
I wish I could look you in the eyes one more time and tell you that despite everything, I never stopped loving you. That the little girl who first loved you all those years ago never completely disappeared. She grew up, made mistakes, experienced life, and became a woman, but she never forgot you.
Today, I'm choosing to remember the good, honor the complicated, forgive what I can, and release what I cannot change.
May Christ hold you close, welcome you into His kingdom, and give your soul the peace that this world sometimes makes so difficult to find.
And if Heaven allows for reunions, I hope one day I get to see you again. I hope we get to pick up where we left off, without the misunderstandings, without the hurt, without the pride, and without all the things that stood between us.
Just two old friends who knew each other when we were children.
Until then, rest peacefully, my sweet angel.
Happy Veterans Day to my first love, my first best friend, and the first person I ever loved enough to believe I would die for.
I love you forever.
And some part of me always will.
Until we meet again.
To be continued…………….
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