Mood: ‘Lovely Day’ by Bill
Reflections On ‘Lost’ Love
I do not know how long it took or when it happened. Understanding that death isn’t the end of emotion, isn’t the end of Love (or other long-held emotions). Understanding that, like many hardships in Life, that the flames of pain must needs be walked through to the end, to survive them and learn from the pain to avoid, if possible, the cause of the pain; to learn from our bad experiences.
That is surely a simplistic way to put the process. But there is a recent impetus for me to engage in these thoughts again.
Roughly 20 years ago, I met someone who was to have a lasting effect on my life that continues through to this very minute. 17 at the time of introduction, she was a gamer on the discussion board for the video game ‘Tomb Raider’. It was a fun community and I met a few lasting friends that continue through today, as well. Her name was Nina and she came across as a very intelligent but troubled girl who, while seeming very mature for her age, was very much a Party Animal type of teenager.
Maybe I need to back up a little and explain where I was in my life at this time. Had a good, steady job approaching my mid-30s. My first sexual experience was akin to being forced; at 20 I was enrolled in college with a major in Astronomy and minor in Theater. Theater was much more fun than Astronomy and my grades suffered for it, but it was through Theater that I was interested in a woman a few years older and more experienced sexually, which certainly prompted me to want to spend time with her and hope for The Event. It happened. For my first time with a woman, it was over quickly, but she was not done with me and was able to get me aroused several more times, even as I wanted to stop, as each orgasm became very painful. Needless to say, this encounter made me sex-shy for the future.
Then was the first girlfriend. As it happened, she was the first to break my heart by cheating on me and blaming me for it. No good communication was the real ‘culprit’, but still no excuse. At any rate, this put me off relationships for a bit.
Then came Nina. There was an age gap, but there was also nothing of a love interest for a few years, and chatting in forums and chat rooms turned eventually into phone calls. I should say that many of the members in this Lara Croft community met outside of the forums and posted pictures, so we were all pretty sure we were real people, and Nina was a real person. Living in Alaska at the time, I never met up with any other members. But I eventually very much wanted to meet up with Nina; she was the first to shyly approach the subject of stronger feelings, which was still a bit shocking, but I was also having stronger feelings.
To make the proverbial long story short, there was definitely love, but there was never a meeting. Getting into college, she went off the rails; sex, drinking, drugs, and she was set on a destructive path. We had considered ourselves on-line daters, but she ‘broke it off’ admitting she couldn’t be ‘true’, which hurt because of my past, but eventually earned her even more respect from me. We always said or wrote ‘I love you’ or such sentiments in continued calls and e-mails.
She barely made it to her 30s.
In her mid-20s, she contracted AIDS. By her late 20s she had brain cancer. 12 years ago this last week, January 12th, she passed.
For most of my life, I have considered myself a Hopeful Romantic. This through two more deceitful heart-breaks, the last 10 years ago from the woman I was first considering proposing to after we moved in together just before she took a summer job in the Interior of Alaska at a wilderness camp. As it happened, she moved out of state with her boyfriend, the guy that helped us move in together.
Although I have become much less trusting of a potential girlfriend, even as I fully understand that it has everything to do with me and nothing to do with that potential lover, and tread lightly that path to a relationship, I still indulge in flowers and conversation that allows me to cater to her personality with Romantic Things. Wines, foods I might cook for her, dancing and dancing lessons she’s into ballroom or other styles (before my knee would not allow it) and so forth. Alas, my stand-offishness to commit because of my past has quashed any deeper relationship, which I take to mean she isn’t the Right One, though I blame them not. Since my move to North Carolina, there have been no dates at all.
The One Love that has sustained me was that of, from and for Nina. Even before she went blind and into a coma, we were chatting, e-mailing and calling one another regularly, me doing my best to support her emotionally as I could. Even through her tough and troubled existence, we remained emotionally close. I suppose she was embarrassed, as she never would agree to one or the other visiting. I thought it would happen at some point. Even those other members she met years after the discussion boards were defunct thought we would eventually meet up. Until, of course, the opportunity was taken away.
However, this was a real first true love for me. For her, as well, or so she told me. It and the memories of her have sustained me through rough times, and now I remember her fondly along with my brother who passed and others.
In fact, years after her passing, I started getting Facebook messages from someone who looked like a model in her profile picture that showed with the “‘X’ would like to send you a message over Facebook Messenger” message. Figuring it was a scam of some kind, I ignored them. Until, that is, someone else who had been close with Nina and I was still in contact with texted my phone to tell me this was Nina’s friend and, in fact, the one who had taken care of her until her passing!
Enter Lacy. She and I have met three times now and have a very strong friendship and love for one another, both having gone through a lot of shit since the 8 or so years we’ve known each other. Not sexual but more than a sister kind of a relationship, though it might have gone sexual if she wasn’t married in the last two years. Her history with Nina began in college and for a time they were lovers and shared that destructive path, but always remained in love and in touch even after Lacy got off that path. When we first started talking/chatting she told me she remembered Nina talking about her Alaska Man!
But this is what finally seems to be that legacy of Love from Nina; I mean, who the hell knows where the Path of Life will take them, but to have that chance to commiserate with the one person who was with Nina at the end, to hear that Nina spoke of me to her and, even though I knew it to be so, to know I influenced her in a positive way. Yet, that almost pales when compared to the incredible relationship I have with Lacy! It cannot be stated more clearly than had I not known Nina, I never would have met Lacy, and even that almost didn’t happen because of her Facebook profile picture! Let me say here that Lacy is an absolutely stunningly beautiful woman, but even more so because of her intelligence and personality. My life was enhanced by knowing Nina, and is also enhanced for knowing Lacy.
(That Was All Rather Rambling, But Here Are My) Final Thoughts
I vividly recall sitting in my Dodge Grand Caravan in the parking lot of the dental lab I worked at the day I was called and told of Nina’s passing, bawling my eyes out.
I recall the call I got from my mother informing me that my brother Doug has passed, again at work at the lab I still work at to this day, and determining the best course of action was to keep working instead of going to my apartment and being alone with that grief (my parents living in Tennessee at the time). There were tears, of course, and that horrible feeling of definitive and irrevocable loss.
The only major differences between the two losses is that I knew better that Doug was likely to pass soon. Nine, being stubborn to the end (she was nothing if not stubborn, one of the many reasons I still love to this day) hung in there for months.
The basic difference in how I handled each situation was in that of acceptance. With Nina, the loss left me depressed and even slightly guilty that I couldn’t do more for her, which I understand is ridiculous as I had come to the conclusion years before that , having done all I could and having continued to be there for her, what she chose was her own decision and she took it knowing full well what might occur. As the ol’ saying goes, if you love someone, set them free, and I believe that goes for the duration of being together, being married; we do not have a slave in such a relationship of love, we have a partner who is their own being. A relationship works when you are on the same ‘page’ and work together towards that Common Goal or Goals.
With Doug, I accepted his death easier, perhaps; not only because I knew it was likely, but because he also left behind a daughter than I knew I had a responsibility towards that I took, and take, seriously. This loss I handled by writing out my thoughts, just shooting my brain through my fingers and typing what came to mind. As difficult as it was, it was my honor to turn those writings into his eulogy, and it strangely helped to say the words out loud to a large group of people.
So, here it is, the culmination of a good life with many passings, several very close-to-the-heart ones: we hopefully learn better to accept and move through out heart-breaking losses, remembering the love we have for those losses is stronger than the loss itself. Sure, that love makes the remembering hard for years and there will be tears. But those tears will turn to tears of bittersweet happiness, sad at the loss but happy for the loving memories. That song. That movie. That book. That holiday. That joke. That play. Whatever, you have that memory, and that person still lives within you and, by God, you should be grateful for that!
I believe that the energy of life still exists after one has passed. Heaven, spirits, call it what you will. This month their has been much on my mind as my father slips into the first stages of Alzheimer’s and his health suffers, my mother goes in for a heart valve replacement surgery soon and life has many distractions. Just this last Thursday, the anniversary of Nina’s passing, my mind was not on her…until I picked up a case I was designing and saw the patient’s first name: Nina. I then realized the day it was and the wonderful memories of her lightened my thoughts and relieved some of the slight turmoil of those worries.
I am grateful for that, for her. Yeah, I miss you, Nina, but appreciate your visit and every moment we had in the time we had.
I hope this finds all who read this far doing well. Pax vobiscum.
