Remember How I Love You: Love Letters from an Extraordinary Marriage by Jerry Orbach and Elaine Orbach with Ken Bloom

                 I came across this book when I was looking for conspiracy books written by Richard Belzer.  A book about love and a search of conspiracies probably sounds like an odd combination, but there is a logical reason these two things came together.  Richard Belzer wrote the afterword for Remember How I Love You.  With the new search function my county library system has put in on their website, when I type in Richard Belzer everything involving him comes up.  This is how I went from conspiracies to love.           

                Jerry Orbach portrays my favorite detective on Law & Order, Lennie Briscoe.  I watched him on the TV show Murder, She Wrote and in the movie Dirty Dancing.  Even though I did not know it until recently, I also listened to Mr. Orbach as Lumiere in the animated film Beauty and the Beast.  I have been watching Mr. Orbach for quite awhile, but I did not know much about him as a person.  He spent many years in the theater, nobody had anything bad to say about him, and he wrote his wife, Elaine, a poem every day.  These are all things I did not know about Mr. Orbach.  The book Remember How I Love You: Love Letters from an Extraordinary Marriage revealed all of these things with the most important element being the poems.  In reality, while Mr. Orbach’s career is discussed, the book is about his relationship with his wife and the poems he wrote.  The poems were never very long or written on anything fancy, but they were meaningful and Mrs. Orbach kept every single one. 

                The people in the Orbachs’ life admired their relationship.  Even though the poems were not to them, they understood their importance.  After Mr. Orbach died, Mrs. Orbach was encouraged to write this book and share with the world the incredible relationship she and her husband had.  It took five years for the book to be written and published, and in all that time, the poems continued to hold a special meaning in Mrs. Orbach’s life.

                After turning in the final manuscript, Mrs. Orbach suddenly and unexpectedly died.  When I read this, what came to mind was Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash.  Mr. Cash died not even a full four months after Mrs. Carter Cash.  I always took this as Mr. Cash loved his wife so much he could not live without her.  This is what I felt with Jerry and Elaine Orbach.  While it was years instead of months, I felt that once Mrs. Orbach told their story it was time for her to be with her husband again.  That was how strong and important their love was.

                I really hope that those who read this book walk away realizing that the littlest things can keep a love strong. It does not have to be a poem, but something to let the other person know he or she is on your mind. While I know it will not fix every problem, maybe these efforts will make the problems easier to work through. I may be wrong in my thoughts, but I may be right. Either way, in my book, it is worth a try.