Oh gosh, where do I start. This may be too long, but...

Probably my most important lost love is a guy I met in ninth grade. He was a Cherokee share cropper's son so he was poor. He was so good looking. His hair was jet black and he had brownest eyes.
From the moment we met, he told me he loved me. His phone calls followed me through three marriages and two divorces and we were always together when I was divorced.

I can almost hear him now. The phone would ring and he would say, "Hi pretty lady" and I could hear his smile no matter how far away he was.

Through sheer determination, he became a doctor and eventually a millionaire. While in med school he got a girl pregnant and married her then later found out the child was not his, but stayed to raise it.

He always stayed in contact and left his wife for me three times. I always married someone else.
He bought a small plane and learned to fly. He flew to see me all over the United States and rescued me from all kinds of catastrophes. I loved him dearly, but I never wanted to marry him. I never really trusted that he would leave his wife for me. And I wasn't sure either of us could live with it if he did.
The last time he took a residency in a whole new specialty where I lived and planned to start a new practice with a partner. I was afraid to believe him again and I married my third husband.
He gave up the residency and returned to his wife. She knew about me of course, but by then he had made millions and she chose to stay.

Even after all that, he kept in contact and the last time we talked he was planning out ten year class reunion at his mansion. He said, "you can bring your husband. I want to meet him and I want to dance with you just one more time."
One day soon after that, I came in from shopping. My kids and my husband were waiting. They told me his plane had crashed and he and his wife had both been killed.
The whole class was at the funeral. I can hardly type remembering it. His partner gave the eulogy. Turned out he lives across the street from me and I had no idea. When he spoke, everything all added up. All the times when he had said he was leaving his wife for me, he had been doing exactly that and I hadn't believed him. It put me into a deep depression that wound up ending my marriage.

But even that was not the end. About a year later on Christmas Eve, the child he had raised who had been in trouble since junior high called friends to pick him up at the cemetery, went to his parent's grave and shot himself in the stomach then bled to death before the friends got there. By then the boy had a little baby girl so he destroyed her Chistmas forever. Even now it makes me angry.

That's been about ten years ago and though it will always be a part of me, I think I am almost beyond it now. The husband I married last summer knows the whole story and seems to understand. He is nothing like the other guy except perhaps his smile and the way he affects me. I never intended to invest my heart again, but here I am.

smile

[ February 10, 2004, 02:41 PM: Message edited by: smilinize ]