When I was a never-married single mother in my late thirties, I went back to school, hoping to start a career so I could better support my son. Since I loved literature, I took every English Literature class available.
I was a hopeless romantic. Things hadn’t worked out with my son’s father, we never married, and he moved out of state. But I still had dreams of finding my one true and forever love.
I’ve always loved poetry and the more romantic, the better. So, of course, when we studied the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, her most famous love sonnet went straight to my heart.
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight…
A girl could dream! Someday, I hoped to find that kind of love.
A year after getting my degree, and about a month after starting my career as a technical writer, it happened. I met my one true and forever love, and I married him at age forty. I guess it’s never too late. In fact, Elizabeth Barrett Browning was around forty years old when she wrote “How Do I Love Thee?”
So, finally, my life was complete, and I was able to live all those romantic notions in real life. Rick and I had a honeymoon kind of love for twenty years. But, unfortunately, the honeymoon ended when lung cancer destroyed our dream life.
He’s been gone for eight years now. The awful grief is over. I’ve remade my life alone. I’m at peace with being a widow. Today, I happened upon that love sonnet again. It brought back all the memories of when I was that thirty-something young woman, pining away, waiting for true love to find me. I felt again the glory of finally finding that love, enjoying those years with Rick, and the pain of losing him.
When I reread the poem all these years later, the final verse hits differently. Browning perfectly voices how deeply that kind of love penetrates the soul.
…I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
How right she is. Love is eternal. It endures long, long after death.
Here’s the full poem:
How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
By Elizabeth Barrett Browning
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight…
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
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About Katherine Billings-Palmer
On August 13, 2017, I lost the love of my life. Rick Palmer and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary one month before he died at age 63 of complications from treatments for small cell lung cancer. He was my partner and soulmate, the love I had been looking for and finally found at age 40.
Rick was a talented writer and web designer and, in 2002, we began our own web and print design business. We worked together building the business and enjoyed traveling, writing, and playing together. Our dream was to spend our golden years together doing more of the same, but in the ten months from diagnosis to death, that dream shattered.
After Rick’s death, I quickly realized that the enormity of his loss was too much for me to handle on my own, so I began grief therapy. I also began writing through my grief in a journal of feelings, thoughts, memories, and poetry. As I navigate my new life alone, I share my journey and my efforts towards creating my “new normal” on my personal blog: The Writing Widow. I’m also on Instagram, Blue Sky, and Facebook.
I've published three books about my grief journey: my poetry book, I Wanted to Grow Old With You: A Widow's First Year of Grief in Poetry, and two books of poetry and prose - A Widow's Words: Grief, Reflection, Prose, and Poetry - The First Year" and A Widow's Words, Year Two: Grief, Reflection, Prose, Poetry, and Hope."
I also published a memoir: "My Story: A Memoir in Poetry and Prose." All my books are available in ebook and print versions on Amazon.com.