My life outside of work focuses on caring for my spouse, our home, the affordable-housing properties that I rent to local community heroes, my work with my local fire department, and occasional community wonky meetings as a resident old fart (I mean, old sage.) My spouse and I do not have a social life. Those kinds of things are in our distant past with nice memories.

Juggling time for my current-day activities when one is working full time can be…

…a bit of a struggle. However, since we do not have children, I really cannot complain. I look at what my nieces and nephews are doing — working full time and caring for my “greats” — and wonder how in the world they do it.

Lately, though, I have re-dedicated my outside-of-work activities for one thing: caring for my spouse. He got some distressing health news the other day. I cannot talk about it here, but it is serious and will require surgery later this month.

The best care I can give is to pay 100% attention to the man I love. Listen to him, converse, and remember that he is my main reason for being. I prepare his meals and do things to lighten his load. I will tell jokes (badly) and animate some “little friends” with voices to have some fun. I chased the spouse around last night with a little ghost whose “voice” said, “booooooo booooooo boooooooo.” My spouse smiles and laughs.

Each afternoon-turning-evening after preparing another home-cooked meal for an early dinner, we will go to our basement leisure room. Instead of firing up the laptop and read/respond to email and do other work, I sit next to my spouse, hold his hand, and watch TV. I really don’t care what we watch. The spouse is more interested in television than I am. But just to have time to be with my man and hold him — without doing anything else (no computer, no sillyphone, nada) — is how I show the man I love how I love him.

Cherish what you have, hold those you love close. Show how you care by your actions, smiles, and encouragement. Lighten the load.

After all…

Life is short: you only have “now” to show those you love how you love them.