My heart ached as the casket lowered into the ground. Michelle and I had been married for 35 years, but now she was gone. The cancer had killed her amazingly fast; it was only a couple months from when she was first diagnosed until she died. She was only 56 years old.
I found myself thinking about how rich and wonderful it had been, being married to her, but then I remembered our vows – "Until death do us part" – and realized that our marriage was a chapter of my life now ended.
*****
Michelle and I had five children together, all of them now grown – three girls and two boys. The five of them were a great source of comfort to me now, helping me to remember the good times, and the life we'd shared. Especially our middle daughter, who was virtually a clone of her mother, both physically and in her personality. I never lost my sense of wonder to look at our children and realize that they came from Michelle and me; that they were literally made of the two of us, of Michelle-stuff and me-stuff. Between the five of them, and the grandchildren that were starting to arrive, they helped make the days a little less lonely.
Sometimes during the nights, though, the loneliness, the sadness and the sense of loss could get pretty challenging. It seemed to help to think back on the life we'd shared together for 35 years, and the joy she'd brought to my life. Over the years, we'd really grown together, just like it was supposed to happen.
Especially in my bed at night, I could hardly help thinking of all the great sex we'd shared over the years; the warmth of her body nestled against mine, the firm fullness of her breasts, the way she would move against me when we made love, my erection happily buried inside her.
Our sex was always good, often very good, and sometimes incredible, bordering on transcendent. A few of our very best times together kept recurring to me, like the time, on one of our family vacations, when we went skinny-dipping and made love on the beach at midnight, after putting the kids to bed, the crashing waves providing the background music as we plunged together in our mutual ecstasy. When the Northern Lights appeared in the sky above us, the moment passed from 'wonderful' into 'transcendent'.
Then there was the time we took a 'getaway weekend' at a Bed-and-Breakfast up north, when we made love again and again, and it seemed like I stayed hard inside her for hours. I would come, filling her with my semen, and we would lie in bed caressing each other until I got hard again, without me ever pulling out of her. I've often wondered whether we were annoying the other guests.
Or our 25th anniversary, when we stayed in another cabin in the woods, and spent a week-long second honeymoon completely naked together, except for the few times we needed to leave the cabin for food, or rare sight-seeing excursions. Our mutual nakedness spurred us on, again and again, to new erotic heights, and we were making love three and four times every day, like we had on our original honeymoon, even though we were, by then, well into our 40s.
I thought of our honeymoon, when we had all the time in the world just to get to know each other, and have sex again and again. We'd go out sightseeing, and hurry back to our room to have sex; then go to a play, and go back to our room to have sex, then wake up in the middle of the might to have sex, and then have sex when we woke up in the morning. It had been a wonderful time, and we would often recall those days to inspire ourselves.
I thought of our wedding night, when we'd gone to bed and started making out, like we had hundreds of times before. Then Michelle had excused herself to 'go slip into something more comfortable'. I stripped myself naked and slid under the covers to wait for her return, and whatever erotic outfit she had in store for me. When she returned, she was wearing a tattered old sweatsuit. "This is the most comfortable thing I have," she'd said, leaving us both laughing hysterically, and confirming in my mind that I had married well. Then we fell upon each other and made deep, passionate love for the first time as husband and wife. And then again and again, all through the night.
*****
I thought about the very first time we'd had sex together, one weekend in college when her dorm roommate had gone home for the weekend. I often hung out at her room, and when we were alone, we had a lot of fun making out together, and she'd let me grope her breasts.
With her roommate gone for the weekend, I don't think we were exactly thinking that we would have sex, but when the passion of our making out escalated, we didn't have the anxiety that we could be interrupted at any time, and so we just kept going. When she first gripped my erection through the front of my pants, it was about the most incredibly exciting thing I'd ever experienced.
Soon, I had her shirt off and was fumbling with the clasp of her bra. When I first laid eyes on her lovely breasts, after only ever having felt and caressed them through (or under) her clothes, it took my breath away. I couldn't help myself – I pulled her tightly to myself and began licking and suckling her firm, fleshy orbs, causing her to moan with rising arousal.
I pulled her on top of myself, and continued to suck on her breasts. When she felt my erection through both our pants, rubbing against her pubic mound, she began to grind herself against me, which only served to drive us both a little crazier.
Quickly, she hopped off me, unbuckled my belt, and peeled my jeans off me, leaving me in only my briefs, my erection sticking up like a tent-pole against the fabric of my briefs. A small wet circle spread out from the tip. At first, Michelle was shy about getting me naked, or even reaching inside my underwear. She simply gripped my cock through the fabric and held it, taking note of the size and shape of it.
Not wanting to be the only one naked, or nearly so, I reached over and unbuttoned her jeans, tugging on the waistband to pull it down over her hips. Impatiently, she stood up on the bed and wriggled out of them herself, leaving herself clad only in her cotton panties. Then she laid back down and joined me on the bed.
We hugged each other tightly. I felt her breasts pressing against my chest, her nipples digging into me. The sensation of her naked skin sliding against mine, was utterly intoxicating. I slid my hand inside the waist band of her panties, and softly caressed the cheeks of her ass. After a few minutes, I looked into her eyes; finding the permission I sought, I peeled her panties off her, leaving her completely naked, and open to my gaze.
Her pubic hair was thick and curly and dark. I reached down and began to stroke it, running my fingers through her rich, luxuriant bush. Finding the slit of her opening, I traced along it with my fingertip, noticing the puffiness of her vaginal lips. Tenderly, I pressed my fingertip inside her, while she groaned, and raised her hips up off the bed. I reveled in the smooth, moist warmth of her vagina, and I spent several minutes exploring inside her, while she squeezed on my fingers with her pelvic muscles.
Michelle had been happy to have me exploring her own most intimate parts, but eventually, she wanted to do some exploring of her own. She reached inside the waistband of my briefs, and gripped the shaft of my cock directly, before peeling my underwear off me entirely. She looked at my erect penis with something like a sense of awe. "It's wonderful," she breathed.
We flipped around so that our heads were aligned with each other's genitals, so we could explore each other at our leisure. I stroked all around her pubic hair, her labia, and inside her vagina, like it was my favorite toy on Christmas morning. Michelle was similarly occupied with my penis.
For a long time, she was happily content to simply stroke it and squeeze it, feeling the hardness, and yet the softness of it. She traced along the rim of my cockhead, and laughed as she squeezed the head. Seeing the precum oozing from the tip, she spread it all around on my cock, and delighted in the slipperiness of it.
