Carol Richards, My Girlfriend, Rocks with Love
When you lose your spouse, your loved one, you sometimes wonder if you will ever have love again in your life.
The loss of Barbara has been very hard on me, yet I know that Barbara is with me and that she wants me to be happy.
I met Carol Richards, my angelic girlfriend, through Franchesca McWhorter, a dear friend of Barbara’s and mine.
Carol, who is indeed an angel, has filled my life with joy and love, with light and truth, in the months since.
We have gone for epic road trips across the country, Carol and I, driving to see a Bob Dylan concert on Carol’s birthday in November 2023, one of the great treats of my life to experience this special event with Carol. We also drove to spring training in Arizona to see my two favorite teams play, the A’s and the Dodgers, another adventure that is priceless, one that I will always treasure.
And Carol and I have journeyed on several occasions to Laguna Beach, a favorite spot, to go to plays and dog parks, where we have also hung out with Kathy, Carol’s sister, and our doggies, Penny and Pepper.
Carol is a very special woman, a sublime angel, who has done all of these beautiful things with me, which says so much about her, as she too lost her wonderful spouse, Jeff, some years ago.
That Carol has joined and indeed taken me on these epic adventures tells me what a selfless and caring person she is.
We have been accompanied on our journeys by the music of the great Bob Dylan.
The Bobster is a big part of our lives, just as Dylan was a big part of my life with Barbara.
Carol, a retired nurse, who started a neuroscience stroke unit and gave educational talks about many areas of nursing, is a woman of many talents.
She has extraordinary empathy and is a loving caregiver, a quality that suffuses everything that she does.
It is delightful to me that Carol loves Dylan’s music so much.
She and I particularly enjoy listening to the Bobster’s love songs from Blood on the Tracks and other albums.
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And Carol, who has a serenity to her, and I share a love for Dylan’s music as well as a love for dogs and cats with Kathy, like Carol, an angel.
Carol is also a great reader, something that she shares with Barbara and my mother and dad and me, and she has become my Muse.
Like Barbara and my mother, Carol is my champion.
Whether we are walking the doggies, or watching a movie, like The Holdovers, our favorite movie of the past year, or hearing Simon and Garfunkel’s concert in Central Park on Carol’s phone, we have a lot of fun.
And I know that Barbara and God approve of my being with Carol, who is one of my greatest angels, a sublime one at that.
It is said that there are seven or 10 sefirot, emanations of light and truth, in the heavens, in the firmament.
It is not always clear how many there are. But the heavens are infinite. And that is true of love as well.
Love is ein sof, without end in Hebrew.
I feel very blessed by God and by Franchesca, one of my dearest friends, to know Carol and to be her boyfriend.
As I say, Carol too lost her spouse, Jeff.
And she too was not sure if she ever wanted to be or would be in a relationship again.What has become clear to me is that every relationship is unique, every person is unique, and love does not preclude our finding another love later in our lives.
Love is indeed without end.
And Carol is a blessing to me from God.