I first heard this song while driving to work one morning. The words seemed to seep into my soul as I listened and I had this strange sensation that this was my husband conveying a message to me. It had been about three years since his passing and this song seemed to be a portrayal of our lives together from our first days to our last. The ‘rain falling on the tin roof’ brought me back to when we first met and I would stay overnight in his studio apartment above his landlord’s garage. We met a few years after he returned from serving in Vietnam. “I dropped out, I burned up, I fought my way back from the dead..” He was eleven years older than me and I guess I never fully understood the depth of his struggles; but he later told me that when we met, his life changed. Through the years our love grew and he became a devoted husband and father. He truly grew “better as he got older” and was always the ’greatest fan’ of my life, supporting me in every endeavor (being a housewife - I was eighteen when we married, new jobs, attending college, etc.) As my ‘crying shoulder’, he was my voice of reason and together we would weather every storm. Often he would tell me I saved his life, but in reality, I can’t imagine what my life would have been without him. Through him I learned what it meant to be loved unconditionally. And while I wish our time together could have been longer, I will always be grateful to God for the time we had and for the love of a man who will truly remain in my heart forever.