Well, here I am alone at the end of a perfect romance. It happened to William Powell. He never got over losing Jean Harlow. I never will either.

She, I’m sure, is sitting pretty on the other side, wherever that is, with her God. As a devoted and lifelong Catholic girl, an honor grad of a major Catholic college (Trinity College in Washington, D.C.), She arrived with glowing credentials and was welcomed by Jesus and her good Catholic parents.

And here I am, bereft and stunned with tear-stained fingers, pushing the keys on yet another column.

She left me with two beautiful, well-educated daughters, who are waiting to see how I clear away the debris of a broken heart and handle the clearing at the end of a great love story.

She promised me that I would join her on those golden streets when my last cards are dealt. I will hold her to that promise. I can’t go yet. I have waiting to do.

Of course, my cards aren’t all as clean and spotless as hers, so I may have to sit on a golden bench outside of the ecumenical courthouse waiting for judgement from my personal Sanhedrin.

The great book with all of the shady chapters of my life isn’t as spotless as hers. I’m sure she was greeted by a cheering crowd of her French ancestors, at least as vast as that of her heroine Kamala Harris.

I’m sure she embraced them all, while constantly looking back over her shoulder at the still-open Golden Gates left ajar to me. Waiting.

But that’s a scenario left unwritten. I hold the last paragraph in my heart.

Today I’m left with decisions as yet unmade as I look at her picture on my iPhone, propped open against the lamp. She’s smiling with glasses perched on her nose. Waiting for me to make an important decision.

In rough pencil scratches, I write that I can leave it like this:

I can give the daughters to share equally this big white house — free of debt and newly painted because of their mother’s quiet wisdom — one paid-for 2017 Prius, and the massive lawns, while I am still as healthy and handsome as I was when I met their mother on an escalator in a department store 70 years ago.

By law and my decision, I will be allowed to sit here on two fabulous chairs, aged and still handsome, with my yellow bird and laptop, a 67-inch television, one plate, one cup, and silver utensils at the ending of a great love story. Waiting.

Today, a 90-year-old retired Marine moved past the wine section to tell me my writing makes him laugh. He loves my words and I live on that.

I write today near the end of summer with autumn and a long winter ahead, broken by visits and daily phone calls from the “girls.” I wait for those.

I don’t think I could have written a better novel of such a love story than the one we lived.

Well, I guess I just did.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.