{"id":1213,"date":"2011-07-02T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-07-02T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1213"},"modified":"2013-09-17T11:21:28","modified_gmt":"2013-09-17T15:21:28","slug":"just-holding-his-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1213","title":{"rendered":"Just Holding His Hand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here I go again, posting about how much I love my partner. <\/p>\n<p>For the past several months, my partner has not been well.  I have described what is going on in previous posts on this blog. He&#8217;s managing, and we&#8217;ll get through it, together. But there&#8217;s a long road ahead.<\/p>\n<p>As my partner has had symptoms that cause him to suffer, then finding out the cause (a non-cancerous brain tumor), he has been even more quiet and reserved than ever. He is behaving that way because he is frightened. I understand that.<\/p>\n<p>I want to help him as much as I can, but there is little that I can do&#8230; or so I thought.<\/p>\n<p>What I quickly figured out what he needs most right now is to have me sit with him, hold his hand, and just &#8220;be&#8221; with him.  So that is what I am doing.  Just holding his hand, keeping close.  We don&#8217;t have to say a word, and often we don&#8217;t. He can feel how much I love him, just by holding his hand. He knows. I know.  That&#8217;s what a true, loving relationship is all about.<\/p>\n<p>I felt badly in the way that I allowed other activities in my life take me away from my partner at a time when he needs me to comfort him. I got busy with family, with my motorcycle riding club, with my senior pals, and with community leadership work. I would look forward to writing blog posts and updating my website and so forth and so on &#8212; all taking me away from spending time with my partner.<\/p>\n<p>Was it that I didn&#8217;t want to be with him?  Of course not.  But I allowed other things to consume precious time. Fortunately, if I can say one thing for being together 18+ years is that my partner understood that being &#8220;busy&#8221; was how I was. He never asked for anything, and didn&#8217;t complain when I ran off to this meeting or got involved in that project out-of-the-house.  <\/p>\n<p>But another credit to being together as long as we have been together is that I figured it out fairly quickly (or at least I am giving myself credit for it) &#8230; he wanted and needed more time with me. I scaled back my other activities tremendously &#8212; because, after all, my partner truly is my life, my love, my one-and-only. Nothing and no one is more important to me than he is. So if the blog doesn&#8217;t get written, the website gets stale, the Harley sits in the garage &#8212; so be it. He is my number one.<\/p>\n<p>Life is short:  hold the hand of the one you love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here I go again, posting about how much I love my partner. For the past several months, my partner has not been well. I have described what is going on in previous posts on this blog. He&#8217;s managing, and we&#8217;ll &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1213\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ld","category-partners"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}