Before Silent Bob…

Hard to believe that at the end of this month I will have been a widow for five years. 

(Just so you know, I can’t imagine anyone relishing that title.)

There was a Christmas party about two years before the last five, when the question was asked, “Would you remarry if your spouse died?”. 

This is one of those conversation starters that in hindsight is a really stupid question to ponder.

Why?

Because, you are going to base your answer on zero knowledge of what life will be like if you actually find yourself in said situation. 

I of course said, “No, not ever, one time was enough! Who’d want to go through all that again?” 

This oft voiced female reply is based on the supposed necessary training of a man for the complexities of marriage. However, an equal number of female respondents will voice the hope that once a spouse dies, you will be free to love another. 

Since we know what camp I identify with, you will not be surprised that as the months have gone by, the love I felt for SB and the clarity of how much he loved me feels truer than ever. Still there and maybe more real. There is a diminishing respect or tolerance between a couple after years of familiarity. There respective foibles take precedence and can breed an unnecessary discontent.  This is a danger in relationships, certainly in years long ones. Toss in all of the shitty things life deals us all and marriage looses some of it’s luster. Once a widow, you have the emotional landscape before you allowing for acknowledgement of missed blessings.  

I have so many memories of unnecessary heartache and selfishness on my part. Unfortunately, if life provided do-overs, I would likely err yet again in the prosecution of my marriage. 

Such is the fickleness of the human ego. 

             “Vanity, definitely my favorite sin.” (Al Pacino as the Devil in the Devil’s Advocate)

What remains odd to me is that by all legal, spiritual, and covenantal accounts, I am now free to pursue love and yet I don’t. Why does the love for SB sit at the back of my mind, like a roadblock, a sin if I did, yet uncommitted? 

I think that’s why I googled Thurman last night. 

Let’s step back a bit. 

I was never good at dating. I don’t think i had a single date in high school. (That negates such a thing in junior high). I had crushes, very unrequited and if I had to guess there might have been a couple or so that went unrequited the other way. That is high school for most of us, well for me at least. (I actually don’t think this as awful of a condition as it might first appear.)

Once a freshmen in college, I was exposed to a different dating pool. 

The gym was on the way home from college. Being a commuter, the drive from Conway was about fifty minutes from my childhood home, where I still lived, the gym half way in between. Cars had big engines then, heavy and fast, and I was a young woman with one. I do not remember how I got started at the gym, the only thing left in my memory of the place was the smell of the floor-ex mats and the bins full of powdery chalk. At first, I would stop in three times a week, to work with Kerry and whatever gymnastics team he was coaching. 

I never could figure out Kerry. He flirted. Or i thought it was flirting, I didn’t find him particularly attractive, but he was unusual and therefore interesting. A big guy, kind of sloppy, he was a good experiment. I was expanding my understanding of the world of men a bit better. I had always felt comfortable around males. I had a close relationship with my father, a complicated one to be sure. Dad was brilliant, tortured, an alcoholic (sober by this time), who believed in science, God, and education. The talks he and I had were one-sided conversations, ranging in content from the differences between men and women (some unabashedly about sexuality), the danger of obsession, the need for God, and the value of honesty. All of this was framed and colored by his own demons and errors. With that kind of anchoring, Kerry was giving me a different view. 

Looking back i think Kerry was either inherently odd, possibly gay, or high on weed. Our flirtation was this: He would ask me to run errands with him, I would climb into his rather pedestrian, messy vehicle.  I would slide over next to him, at his request (I still remember it as more friendly then sensual) sitting my young butt on his center console, at which point sometime during the errand run he would reach back into his backseat, (never in any way forward was his reach), and pull out his Rainbow Box. He would then read to me. On the side of the road. 

NOTE: Rainbow Box…HERE

While I was steeped in theory on male/female relationships, it is possible I was too innocent in practice to forward the relationship. Or maybe I had read it right, if in somewhat nebulous terms, all along. Neither of us was interested. Despite the fact that I did and still love when someone reads to me, Kerry and I were monogomously-platonic-pseudo-romantically-but-not-really an item. 

Then Thurman showed up. 

He walked into the gym, fit and handsome, unabashedly flirtatious, and without reservation and no doubting, and after not very much time, the man was interested. 

He was 12 years my senior. When the gym visits ramped up to 5 times a week, someone let my Dad in on the change in routine. My best friend whispered in my ear, “I think he’s married.”

Alright, so I’d like to tell you a very sordid love story here of a torrid love affair, one suitable for a raunchy movie.

Nope.

Thurman offered to ‘spot’ me and I accepted. 

Not really knowing all of the details of the sexual dance and foreplay, even I knew that kneeling next to me, his hand on what would have been the very narrow back of a fit 18 year old woman, who was clearly also interested, was very stimulating. I certainly liked it. There was a craving sitting in my belly for this kind of attention. Certainly, he wouldn’t be married and indulge in this. 

I never got past needing a spot and we never kissed, fondled, or sat alone in a car.

It wasn’t long before Thurman told me he was moving for a new job in Memphis. He hugged me and left. 

Two years later, I must have called him and told him I would be in Memphis and did he want to do lunch. I don’t know how I arranged it, without google or cell phones, but I did. I drove, nervous, wondering how he would be, would he have changed, was he uncomfortable about my invitation to meet him, where would we go for lunch?

You know what is going to happen, right?

A combination of innocence and virtuous female, still, I thought I had invited him for lunch. Which was not what he thought I was inviting him for. He wasn’t angry, I am not even sure he was disappointed. More resigned, and respectful. No pushing, no protests, just finality.

Last night, forty years later, the clock ticking past 3 am, I am thinking about SB and my innocence in what it means to lose a partner. I thought through the men I imagined I cared for. Thurman represented an encounter that most likely would have changed the trajectory of my life and by all accounts not in a good way. It took me several minutes to remember his full name. 

Google never sleeps.

Thurman died at the age of 70 in 2012. I think his family used a picture for his obituary of him when I knew him. Notes were left from two groups of people on his memory page. One group was the women in his life. He most likely was married when I knew him, and I think most of his encounters with women had a much more predictable outcome than mine. One has to chuckle that I still remembered  him 50 years later.  It was the other group that stunned me. A host of recovering alcoholics thanked him for his care and help. 

I quote from his obituary: 

“Thurman worked as a Drug and Alcohol Counselor for the Veterans Administration in Memphis, TN. He was very active in AA groups in Tennessee and Alabama.”

I suspect he had not found AA when I knew him. I am guessing he was married. But I also know that alcoholics struggle with a demon that if you aren’t one, you have no idea of the depths of the struggle. I also know those in my family with that demon are extraordinary people, capable of great humility and keen awareness of others, compassionate and nonjudgemental, with a saving faith that gives them courage that is not average. 

I don’t know why Thurman didn’t take advantage of my innocence in his own selfishness. As I look back there was very little attempt at seduction on his part. I like to think that he felt an element of protection for innocence, the kind that falls outside the purview of adults trying to find love in the wrong places and people. Maybe what I experienced was the harbinger for how that last part of his life was spent, serving others in a way that only another alcoholic could. Something about that knowledge eased me, I closed my eyes, content on the way his story ended.

I am a widow that feels uncomfortable finding another someone to hold my hand and partner with me. Life looks different from this end when it comes to falling in love. I will, however, amend my answer to that dumb question. It’s not a matter of training a husband, it’s the knowledge of possibly losing one more. And maybe the same errors.  I find solace in concentrating on the amazing ways God wants to teach me about serving others, in the form of a good truth at 3 am google searches or remembering what it’s like to be certain love never ends.   

This essay is in honor of “Sober January”. Google it. 

And to those that serve those they love. And even sometimes those they don’t.