A LITTLE STORY....Part 3
So, it happens yet again…..and after the biggest exam of my life and even bigger ones down the road…..And after a beautiful marriage….3 beautiful kids…..a wonderful practice….a great house….a fire accident….a better house….a hurricane calamity….an even spectacular house……college……grandchildren……death in the family….being widowed….it happens…yet again. Just when you thought it was long over. Of course, it’s different when your skin is all wrinkled up and it takes you more time to get to the toilet than the time you actually stay in the toilet. Where every movement becomes a mission in life….a painfully stricken activity….My mind is all shot up, where pieces of memories are incoherent…..and nothing seems to stick or mean anything anymore….nothing other than the family that you have….then something like this hits you….old trunk of antique emotions….memories that you can’t seem to be confident enough to call your own. It’s not the sort of day you’d think it would happen. She just waltzes through your life…once again.You find yourself in a place on top of a cliff….somewhere high and dimly green, above raging waves crashing……where the rocks seem to take the most alien forms…with darkly grey skies and chilly winds to the south….You feel the earth pound on you…while your heart races….and you stare at her shape while you shiver….coming to you, floating on every rock and soil on the ground……at first you dream that your thinking…and then you think you are dreaming…How can it be her….after all these years….can you still be an idiot at this day and age? Who can forget those beautiful little brown eyes behind that delicate angelic face….her skin, gracefully seasoned to perfection….her every breath, ever so slow, ever so soft, ever so gentle……just warms you up from the inside….you feel like your 20 yet again, gramps! I decide not to cry and begin to clear my throat…..that usually takes a while…but I gamble at my voice…what passes at this age as a voice…. I tell her “hello”…and it’s the sweetest “hello” I have ever said in years. The sheer magnitude of the moment silences everything else.....Nothing matters…..I began to talk about my life….every house I had…every beautiful child I got…my amazing wife…and every single shitty thing that happened to me. I tell her stories after stories with great ease that I haven’t experienced for quite some time now. I go on and on and on, and amazingly…she listens….she listens with great attention….she smiles more than once….it just warms me up even more. She begins to say one word phrases….and it feels like a million. Her voice just vibrates down my spine. Then, she makes 2 word paragraphs….and then….books of sentences. She talks about her life…all the beautiful shitty things she had to go through….her family…her kids…how she was widowed…she just talks and talks and talks….and I hear and listen to every guppy word that softens the cold wind around us….I begin to cry…because I am happy once more….moved by the gentle caress of her presence and the twisted sound of her giggles. It went on for hours and hours…to days…to years. It felt like we were together again. But it wasn’t true…it was a fantastic fiction…but it was all genius little lies…that I believed in.
Then a silence breaks everything…as if she’s looking back….trying to live in the reality of things….She begins to apologize for what happened before…for all the years that it took her to say it and mean it. I tell her it’s ok, that it worked out in the end…I lie for all the good it would do both of us. Then, I asked her if any of it was true…if the six years we spent were lies and filled with deceit. She smiles…and says it doesn’t matter. What mattered was how we felt…what we did…everything else was not important. It shouldn’t be. She tells me like a breathtaking movie…it always had to end…no matter how many times you see it…and that she cried….Every time she saw me…she cried inside….but didn’t know how to show it. I tell her guys are supposed to be the insensitive ones. That wasn’t her part to play. She tells me, women should have more trouble letting go…it wasn’t suppose to be my part to play it. We laugh a little bit…then suddenly…without any chance to stop it….without any hesitation…like an idiot’s last final words.….I tell her I love her. So much….for so long….that life was interesting with her around….and although I wouldn’t trade my life for that fantasy…..it was an adventure to dream about it. She stands there….tears fill her eyes…she smiles…her heartbeat feels oddly alive….She says the words I thought I would never get to hear in this lifetime…one last time….…She says: “I LOVED YOU TOO”. And for the first time in my life…..I feel complete again. I found myself. Like a big piece of me comes home….I go crazy…and hug her….and I hold her as tight as I can….as tight as my weary little arms can…I kiss her in the cheek and crash my face in her ear…..and tell her thank you….and suddenly, I feel cold again….It was a gnawing coldness….A voice calls me back in the background….it was my grandson….#2……it was all just a dream….yet again….I stood there…in that very darkly beautiful cliff……on top of her grave…where a princess was laid to rest. The words…."Here lies an Angel"…..was written on the stone. The kid asks: “Who was she, grampy?” I tell him that she was a nice woman who did many good things….who meant a whole lot to a lot of people, and who also became my friend. I tell him he would rarely meet people like her…and that if he did….it was best to just let himself go and share an adventure with them. I stand there for another minute…it takes forever…but I was able to collect myself…and I go on…….living my days…..and my genius little lies…..bidding for my time….