She was always going on about the importance of words: the importance of saying what you meant and meaning what you said. In some ways, she had to retrain me to think that way, the public service and its culture of euphemism being what they are. What does it mean to tell someone, then, that they are the love of your life? How can one say this in any meaningful way? This is what I have been able to come up with.
To call someone the love of your life is to make two related claims at once. The first is that you have never loved anyone as much or as fully as the person to whom you are applying the epithet. This one is easy. You either have or you haven’t. You should be able to look back on your life and tell whether or not it is true. The second is that you know you will never love this much, or more, again. This one is harder.
It is harder, because no one can predict the future—I had learned that the hard way with her—but it is not impossible. It had taken me thirty-five years to discover her and the fact that I was able to love like this. Even without accounting for my vices, let alone the fact that I knew in my marrow I would not go looking for love again, when I regarded the window of time I had left I felt I was on solid ground. I could make the claim entirely in good faith. I had never loved anyone the way I loved her and I never would again.