i wanna be free
How do you sum up 55 years? How do you say the things that matter in a way that people will understand? It’s been said I have a way with words, but when I set down to say the things I want to say, words seem to get in the way.
She was born a good soul, clean and innocent in a small northern New Jersey town. She took me there once, I was not impressed and still the things for her were there, home, memories, everything that makes something special and true.
She grew up under the eye of her parents and grandfather. Nicholas was her deity. They shared days of exploration and night of love. He would make for her the most exquisite things and she would admire him and his goodness.
As time went on time does what it always does and takes from us the best things in life. And so it went that one spring day, Nicholas left this world and broke her heart in two. He was her ideal, he was her foundation and when he died it left her drifting, left her without the best parts of her soul.
She was ripped from her home. Taken to a place she didn’t know, nor I think wanted to. Her life was spent in struggling to rebuild. Making due with the things she had around her, the family that was left to her growing more and more away from them, towards something even she didn’t know.
With a heard heart braced against the slings and arrows of loss she discovered boys. Learning quickly that they will give her everything on the promise of returns, she ventured her way into the world of dating as a predator and not the prey.
There were times when she would slip and fall into relationships but time and being that it was the 80’s would prove to her that men could not be trusted with her heart for long. And so it was that she buttoned up her armor and set about the task of taking without measure what she could of this world.
I never knew a more courageous or headstrong person. She was a conundrum. She was fierce and delicate, strong and frail, she had a force of will and just behind those savage grey eyes you could see the desperate weakness blowing about like a thunderstorm on August nights.
I never knew what she saw in me. She told me several times that I was a one night stand gone terribly wrong. She saw in me, I think, a kindred spirit. She saw the flaws in me that mirrored her and wanted to fix me. I didn’t see that I needed repair and so the war between us began. She would cheat and I would reciprocate. She would leave and return and the whole thing would start again.
Time went on and on. Lime does that, laughing at all the little increments that we waste in pursuit of selfish and petty desires. I would often reflect on all of this being to selfish and childish to see that if I would just capitulate, grow up, I could be all that she wanted me to be.
Years pass by like mile markers and as time passed I began to realize that the things she wanted from me were easily obtained by simply stopping the game. Taking myself out of the war and being a man. I was never given the tools to know how to do this and I failed more times than I succeeded. And I recognized that I could never be what she wanted, and settled for last place in her affections.
And so it was that if I could not be Mr. Right, I would be the one guy she could come to when the world got to be too much and she needed a place to rest. It was a salve to soothe the sting of being an abject failure.
Three times God struck her down. Three times I did what I could to stand her up, dust her off and set her on her way. I began to pray for god to take me first. Give her an opportunity to free herself of me and allow her to truly fly free.
We struggled, she never let me forget how useless I was and in kind I never let her forget her adultery. And that persistent juggernaut, time, just kept pushing us along. Further and further into what would become our destiny.
Parents died, she did what she could to console and be consoled. She hid her grief behind a placid face and the turmoil she felt over another wrenched wayward soul who needed to be fixed. Her heart fell to him and I by the wayside.
She was awash in despondency. She wanted so much to be free of him that she sought solace in the arms of many many others. I was horrified that she would not come to me. She had farmed my only useful feature out to a number of sources, leaving me less than useless.
I was simply chauffeur and errand boy. She had nothing left for me to be. And so it was…
We both knew she was dying. I blinded myself to it, ignoring the signs, trying to be the determined foundation for her to rebuild herself after this bout of cancer. I would allow anything less than to watch her grow strong enough for me to stand her up, dust her off and send her on her way…
If it rains on Fridays after eight pm, I am sent screaming back to that night. The night she died. The night I must live with for the rest of my sorry existence. Time has been gracious enough to allow me to go back there and relive the day whenever possible, and I am grateful for that.
The doctors say it was a heart attack. They say she couldn’t tolerate the chemo and blood thinners and it took her life. I know better.
I was at work when she called and told me that she was on her way to the hospital. She died before she got there and I was not with her when it happened. I wanted to stay home. I wanted to be with her but I needed to prove to her that I was still trying to be what she needed and in the end I know she died, because I broke her heart. I was not there when she needed me most, just like every other time and so she simply gave up and made her way through to the one place I cannot follow.
And in the end, I proved nothing other than I was a failure to her… to the very end…