Letter To The Editor:

How do you fill a lifetime when love is gone? You can fill the hours, the days, the weeks, the months, the years with things to do. You can take on jobs, responsibilities and obligations - and even be overloaded.. You can do, do, do and go, go, go until you drop but you won't have "filled" a lifetime; you will have "passed" the time.
What do you do with the mind when love is gone? You can still  think and plan and do - but you can't force the mind not to return to thoughts of that last love. No, it returns at each unguarded moment ...the dreams, the waking thoughts still remain the very "inner you."
What do you do with yesterday's dreams and plans for tomorrow when there is no hope? You think on them, you cry over them, you put them away in an old box to be brought out and remembered as you grow old.
But hope is gone when love is gone.
Who or what do you use as  a point for your affection when the one you love is gone? There is nothing quite the same. Other family members need your love, it gathers cobwebs; true honest love is not replaced.
What do you use as an excuse for going on? All the age-old clichés come to mind, none of which really fit. I suppose it is just nature to keep plugging along without love, without hope, with ragged dusty dreams.
How do you fill a lifetime?
What do you do with the mind? 
What do you do with unfulfilled dreams?
What is the excuse for going on? What?

Dollie Griffith
Cleveland