My name is Daisy. I’m 83, and I’ve been a widow for four months.
My husband, Robert, proposed to me on Valentine’s Day in 1962. We were in college.
He cooked dinner in our dorm’s tiny shared kitchen. Spaghetti with jarred sauce. Garlic bread that was burned on one side.
I’ve been a widow for four months.
He gave me a small bouquet of roses wrapped in newspaper and a silver ring that cost him two weeks of dishwashing wages. From that moment on, we were never apart.
Every single Valentine’s Day after that, he brought me flowers.
Sometimes it was a small bouquet of wildflowers when we were broke and living in our first apartment with mismatched furniture and a leaky faucet. Sometimes it was long-stemmed roses when he got promoted.
