I Still Look For You – The Sequel

If you’ve not read the original and the series entitled, “Memories We Share”, some of this will not make sense to you. The only summary I can give is that the first deals with memories of a young man who helped to save my life and the second is about my husband’s impending death from COPD and the journey we are on.

“You are in fear of losing your best friend, and hoping that someone that was there for you before will be able to help you thru what you are enduring now...am I right?” These words were handed to me for consideration, not by a psychiatrist or counselor, but out of the wisdom of a forty-something trucker’s wife.

As my husband slides further away from me, sleeping nearly twenty of every twenty-four hours of each day we are given, I find myself alone and lonely. I dare not let my mind consider fully what it will be like without him here, yet I’ve had to consider how I will survive financially, if I can afford to keep our home and such things. Emotionally, though, I have not let myself dwell on his absence, at least not consciously. However, dreams plague me with friends who have already passed, times of long ago and almost constantly, of Bobby.

Now that he’s passed forty-five, I should probably refer to him as Bob, but he is forever in my memory as Bobby. Those memories, brought on by dreams, had become almost annoying. We lost touch years ago and though we had become friends, it still didn’t seem right to be thinking of any other man while I am married, especially after my husband became so ill. I love my husband more than I can express and am trying every day to extract as much time with him as I can. But in all of those hours when I am alone, my mind does wander back to earlier years and to the feelings of first being treated as someone precious and smart. I was valued for the first time in my life and it was Bobby that inspired those feelings. I gained self-confidence from the time we spent together, such as I had never experienced.

These dreams of him used to happen for about two weeks before I would get a phone call from him and find he’d been thinking of me or planned to be in our area and wanted to know if it was okay if he stopped by. He and Gary met a few times and Gary understood that Bobby was an important part of my life at one time and that I would always consider him a friend. He had no problem with it. I finally broke down and started searching for him. I was able to find out he had married, for the second time, was pretty sure where he lived and found a social media site where his wife is a member. She only showed that she is married and never referred to him or posted any pictures or the tiniest bit of information about their life, other than where she worked. She did have an old picture of herself on her profile but when I messaged her that came down and up went another old picture of her and her two sons from a previous marriage. I messaged her, identifying myself and asking if she would pass along our phone number or email address to Bobby and explained that I was a friend from long ago who only wanted to get in touch to say hello. I also explained that my husband had met her husband on more than one occasion and that he was aware that I was trying to contact him. Having a completely clear conscience about my motives, I was both disappointed and astounded that she didn’t return or acknowledge my message.

When I get an idea to do something I can become very thick headed and myopic, giving little thought to how it might appear to others. Such is the case with this. Her refusal to at least acknowledge me just made me more persistent. I waited three months, granted there were other things that kept me occupied, but still … in three months you’d think someone could pick up a phone and say hello to an old friend. I mulled this over in my mind and decided he must not want to speak to me. As a matter of fact, I went into an entire repertoire of old baggage as to why he wouldn’t want to talk to me and even managed to pick apart my memories and almost destroy something that was beautiful and happens very seldom. I have such an imagination and too much time on my hands so I had taken this small, well intentioned, plan to say hello and blown it up into a full -fledged struggle.

If she didn’t want me to contact her or him, why didn’t she just block me? That’s what I would have done. Surely she passed along the message, even if she didn’t particularly like the idea, I surely would. By then I was becoming a certified stalker, checking her account a couple of times a week to see if she posted any little hint of what was going on. I pieced together that she kept in touch with her ex-husband and sons on this account, which further irritated me since she must realize that keeping in touch with old acquaintances is not so unusual. Of course, hers was a man she had children with and did not remotely resemble this situation. Still and all she was thwarting my efforts and it needed to be rectified. Even then, I left it alone for another long while and did my best to push the whole thing out of my mind and him out of my dreams.

But as things seem to happen in my life, I happened across (that sounds innocent enough doesn’t it?) a site where her ex-husband posts and read one of the most touching and beautifully written remarks about an old friend and lover of his and his desire that she would one day see the post and they would be re-united, “as star-crossed lovers are destined to do.” It was more than I could stand!

THIS WILL BE CONTINUED ...