“No love? Oh no, everyone needs love. It only makes life so much better.”


“What about the heartbreak?” I asked fiddling with a loose thread from my shirt, “And when the love goes away.”


“Heartbreak hurts, but it’s a part of life. You must get through heartbreak and falling out of love to find that one person that makes you feels…whole.”


“I don’t know I’m only sixteen Mrs. Roberts.”


She smiled, “Young love is the most magnificent discovery of your youth. Your first love is someone you will never forget.”



“You still remember yours?” I was surprised.


“Oh yes,” she paused, “His name was Tyler. I was seventeen at the time.”

She looked somewhere into the past and remembered the great memories.


She continued, “Your first love is nowhere near as important as your last.”


This made me smile. “Harold?”


This made her smile as well, “Yes Harold. We had the greatest times when we were younger. Even as we are growing old together. When life isn’t by your side, love always will be. Remember that.”


I had visited Mrs. Roberts at the Senior Center every Thursday night since then. Two months later Harold’s condition got worse and he died, Mrs. Roberts died one week later. Even though her health was fine I knew she couldn’t enjoy life without her love.

A few months after her funeral I got a slip of paper in the mail from the Senior Center. They had found a note she was going to give me. It read:


“Life has its way of working itself out; love will make all of it easier. You can’t live without it Sarah, love makes the world go ‘round. Life without love is a life not worth fighting for.

~Mrs. Roberts”


Tears streamed down my face. Mrs. Roberts’ death wasn’t unexpected. Like she had said herself, without her love alive she had no reason to keep living.



Love is what had been keeping her alive.