Prologue

What is true love?

It's like asking what life is. The meaning of something so vast and unformed that everyone has opinions. No of those opinions are wrong since they are based on the experience of life itself. Such a loaded question with so many answers. It depends upon what you ask on any given day. The way you form the sentence and the term of endearment is associated. Your culture could shape it, your past or present. What does it mean to you, dear reader?

What is Love? What is infatuation? How do you know the difference? One question leads to another and another.

You could go on for days. For many people, love can mean anything. Money, power, success, or love could represent a feeling between family or friends, even a pet. Love is one of those remarkable things that can be conditional when it's a simple infatuation and unconditional when it runs deep.

Scholars and sages have pondered its existence; poets and philosophers have mused its virtues. There is no definition, as there is no one way to explain a complex feeling.

Humans produce songs, plays, films, and literature devoted to the magical dream; that is love. Perhaps love itself cannot be so structured and expressed by modest words. Love is not something you can capture but something that must be felt.

Sincere love is discovered in the face of a newborn or the laugh of a child playing in sprinklers on a lovely spring day. The first glimpse of a bride as her smile is reflected in her groom's eyes as she appears at the church doors. Or maybe it isn't as flowery as all that? Perhaps, Love is a song you hear years later that transports you back to a first kiss. Maybe you can find it in a familiar cologne scent or a favorite meal shared between friends.

One thing is for sure, an unarguable fact that many lovers share. A faithful love, a natural and honest true love, is with us through the good and the bad. When money is thin, spirits are weary, when health wanes, and sadness rolls in like storm clouds. Because the love that runs as deep as one's soul does not hide from the pain; it floats upon it. That love becomes a life preserver through the thorns and the brambles of life.

True Love never dies.