The View From My Front Porch

Ken has been halfway across the world for several weeks for work, and I’ve been on the road visiting kids and grandkids, spending more time alone than usual. I’ve also been working on my fourth book—remembering old stories and sitting with moments I haven’t revisited in years.

And Martin has been there.

Not just the big things, but the small, day-to-day ones too. Conversations. Ordinary moments. The way life was before everything changed.

This year—2026—marks forty years since he died.

Forty.

That number doesn’t seem possible when I say it out loud. In my mind, he hasn’t aged a day. He’s still thirty-two with a head full of dark, curly hair, and not a wrinkle in sight. Meanwhile, most of my children have already lived longer than he did.

I find myself wondering what he would look like today.

And that’s the part that feels complicated.

Because I have a good life. A full life. A life I’m grateful for.

Ken loves me. He is steady, loyal, and supportive. He has listened to my stories about Martin more times than I can count, and when I tell them, he looks at me with no judgment. No jealousy.

And still… there are moments when I miss Martin in a way that doesn’t stay neatly in the past.

For a long time, I questioned that. It felt unfair to Ken and to the life we’ve built.

I don’t believe that anymore. I think this is what happens when life holds both love and loss.

They don’t cancel each other out. They sit side by side.

Martin belongs to a part of my life that ended without warning. Ken belongs to the life I’ve built since.

Both are mine. Both matter.

Missing someone you loved doesn’t take anything away from the one who is here.

It simply means they were part of you in a way time didn’t erase.

So I sit with those memories.

I laugh. I cry.

They’re not triggers.

They are memories.

— Charlene