Old Friends and Bridges

This video is a very special video because it reunites two men who were good friends, close friends years ago, providing the listening public with some of the most enjoyable, haunting, and thought-provoking music at a time when the music world was filled with rock-and-roll and anti-war rhetoric.  They later split up their act in bitterness and anger.  I never really understood the why.  It wasn’t really important to me at the time.

But this particular song, performed here in 2003 in New York during the “Old Friends: Live On Stage” tour, is very, very special to me.  In early 1970, when I was reeling from the sudden, unexpected death of my grandfather, it was given to me on my birthday as a gift of love, comfort, and support, a statement of unconditional love from a young man willing to come alongside me and help me bear this almost unbearable burden.  

Almost five years later, on November 16, 1974, I married that young man, the love of my life, who gave me this song and life has never been the same.  Together we have been blessed with and successfully raised five beautiful children.  We have stood alongside each other over the years as we buried our fathers, our grandparents, aunts, uncles, my sister and my mother.  We have stood together at the hospital beds of our children fighting to live, wondering how on earth we got there, but still reaching out for each other’s hand, needing that connection, that “bridge over troubled water.” 

Most recently, we’ve had to walk another new road together, caring for my beloved 84yo mother-in-law who has lived across the street from us for almost 30 years and who now resides in a nursing home not too far from our home.

On this day, as I remember our wedding 33 years ago, I dedicate this video to my husband, David, the love of my life. 

Sweetheart, I love you more today than I did yesterday, but not nearly as much as I will tomorrow.  I offer this to you today as you gave it to me back in 1970.  We may be older and grayer like Simon & Garfunkel in this video, but we’re still sailing and I’m right behind.