Author: jhgibson

Dearest W,
I thought I saw you today. The outward form had undeniable characteristics of the woman I fell in love with so long ago. My heart leaped at the possibility it was really you. The room was full of people and who I thought was you was so near that, for a few minutes, my mind played out a quiet conversation between us. An imagination of you walking over with a “Hello” and sat down next to me in the quiet part of the room. How nice it would have been to just talk as friends, to catch up with caring words to each other about how the years had taken their toll. A dream of new days between us that would revive the core friendship we once had. An out of the blue miracle of God’s care love for us both.
You were so close, or so I thought. Certainly it will happen, it must. When would we ever be in a space like this again, with this opportunity. I couldn’t think of it.
And it didn’t happen. The “you” I thought was there, said nothing, showed no awareness that I even existed. I was like a ghost with no influence, no way to change anything. How can that be.
It is my life now. Without you. My oldest and dearest friend. Now my newest and nearest stranger.

I miss you. Please come home.
J

Time to let it go. He spent the better part of 4 years hoping. Not just hoping but making life altering moves to a place that seemed perfect for the two of them. Near enough that the friendship could be planted and cultivated and hopefully so much more.

Too many days thinking about her, feeling about her, mourning about her. He was wide awake. Awake to his faith, awake to how much he loved her even after all they’d been through, all he’d been through. No one ever was going to replace her, he tried, she never left his mind or his heart. Didn’t matter, didn’t change her heart, didn’t defrost what he wondered now was ever a fire for him. When you have to wonder that’s a clue.

He’d begged, poured out his heart, prayed and pleaded. A million tears. It is over. He was alone in this. Jamie, no Wendy. Pathetic, unrealistic, wasting his life on dreams that will never be. The love of his life was gone. As gone as a dead body is gone. Her loss really. He wanted to give so much. He was worth the effort as she was. She obviously didn’t have an ounce of desire for it. She did what she wanted to do and pursuing him was not what she desired. He finally was accepting it.

God is his provider. He knew God saw all about it, understood it intimately, knew what was the desire of his heart. Accepting that God knew everything and better than any human would ever understand. Time for him to stop behaving as though he was lacking. After all God is his provider and He has not chosen to provide her back in his life. This wasn’t about Wendy’s choices, this was about God’s choices for him. Time for him to accept that His ways are better than ours. That He knows all things and for whatever reason had chosen not to answer Jamie’s prayers. Jamie knew God knew all about it. And He had chosen a life without her. A life not prayed for by Jamie. His ways are higher than ours and it was time for the terminus of these dreams, obviously contrary to what God had in mind.

He released her from his mind and soon his heart. At least the present Wendy. The one he knew he would always cherish. Time to get busy with what God has next. No more time will be wasted on what is not God’s will.

How could she forget. 17 years divorced and they were strangers. They’d pass each other on the trail, running in opposite directions. She offered a smile that looked like she remembered who he was, but it was only a smile. Like the smile of senility. The kind of appeasing smile like people give to someone they want to keep steady, who they fear might go off the rails emotionally. A generic smile that meant nothing and he knew it. After a hundred of them cast his way on a hundred passings in recent life. It finally was clear, the smile meant nothing. He meant nothing to her.

How could she forget so much of their lives? It was like he’d never existed and he just couldn’t believe it was possible. He was forbidden to talk to her, a self-imposed rule to appease the girls. They worried he wasn’t balanced to dwell on it, he needed to move on they said. She wasn’t the same person anymore, they said. He couldn’t believe it. There’s no way, no way someone just buries all the joys and struggles. All the swapping of their souls, their dna. How could she forget herself.

He walked the earth, missing a part of his soul. No one but she could fit that place. He tried with someones else and no ones else could ever fit.

They divorced in 2005.
After 23 years of being together, through so many things, having 3 children, moving away from home for college, many jobs many challenges, they divorced.
It was his fault. Discouraged in the ministry, desperate for God to speak something to him to let him know what was what, desperate to feel meaning in a pile of broken dreams, he gave in to listening to dark ideas. Someone else could love him better, someone else had no problem expressing love and adoration for him. Someone else wasn’t his soulmate and sworn partner.
The darkness, that seems so much like light at the time. The “light” of the darkness was the darkness of the grave. Proverbs talked about those who listen to the voice of the enticing woman. That her place is the place of departed spirits.
When he gave in to setting his affections on the siren voice calling him to the rocks, his spirit departed. The man he was, the “stand up” guy known for his faith and sincerity became the hypocrite making excuses why this was the right way to go. But it was the way of death, and he walked it in pain and sorrow, suffering all the while, ironically because he thought it would end his pain and sorrow. The way of death.
18 years he stopped listening to the voice inside him that screamed he was going the wrong way. He and Carole became strangers more than ever. The break was a tearing of their knit souls.
18 years. The woman that was his escape abandoned him. Ignored him, left him in the grave of his choices. He was a fool and he knew it.
Carole wanted nothing to do with him except the most minimal interaction. Couldn’t return, couldn’t go forward, depression was a constant companion.
18 years he went from relationship to relationship, failure to failure. The voice buried in the muted vault of his soul. Now and then he would dream about Carole, in pleasant scenes of their home together. She loved him, welcomed him to a kiss or a hug. The dreams were torture when he woke up. Back to the nightmare – “how did I get here?!?” “What the hell happened?!?”. But he knew. And he suppressed the pain and the love for Carole that never left.
18 years and then he knew he couldn’t live that way anymore. He left the woman he was with. Found a place by himself, near running trails and nature. He went to the mountains to remember what backpacking was like, a true core of himself. A true love he had learned from Carole, from that part of his soul he couldn’t ignore.
He turned back to God, to faith, to many nights alone in a tent in the woods, reading and praying and crying. So much crying. The 18 years of fear and loss pouring out of him when just a thought or a song would pluck his heart strings and leave him in a bent over wretch of pain and regret.

She had never remarried. Still single. He reached out… and she made it clear she wanted nothing to do with him. Nothing. But still he set the wireless, scanning the channels, day after day hoping for a signal, anything to say the battle had turned, but nothing ever came.

And one day he realized that he had to let go. He had to shut it down. Only then perhaps could God work. When he had stopped striving. When he had to put it all in His hands, if there was ever going to be a chance. A move to a new relationship, not going back but forward, to something new. To be with her again, the very fiber of his being. It would have to be God.

He grasped the dial. Turned up the volume and listened for awhile. Though he had in the past sent desperate broadcasts “are you there Carole, over? I love you. Over” now he was afraid to, she had replied with no uncertain terms and then silence. Just static now…
finger on the power switch… minutes going by, sadness welling into his throat and eyes… *click*

In all of my life, there was an emptiness
a longing for something that I never knew.
Then I heard His Word when I was desperate for help
and He came, answered my cry and I was transformed.

But being transformed doesn’t make anyone perfect
A work has to be done that takes a lifetime.
I headed down the path, to be molded and refined.
A painful process but filled with joy in the storm.

Alone, He saw my need, my desire for someone next to me
Next to her, a pair, a knitted life, a complement to the other
You came into my life and changed me.
A part of me that I cannot forget, filling my thoughts each day.

You gave me your heart, your life, your presence
I couldn’t believe it, how blessed to be the one
Our love brought the joys of our lives, three like us and not
Nothing lacked, nothing needed, the Shepherd’s gentle care.

Then I lost my path, walked away discouraged and broke my own heart.
Instead of faith and trust, disbelief and doubt
I lost my best Friend and my best friend, thinking I was right
But all I was was lost and empty and denying what was true.

Years of hiding, years of trying to bury the voice inside crying
for the joy I had, the peace I knew, the blessing of being with you
Years in denial, asleep the darkness, never finding peace.
Then finally awake from the nightmare, shaken by the Lover of my soul.

The damage of my choices is more that I can bear, a daily sadness there.
There’s joy in His light again. To know His voice and presence.
But an emptiness in my soul I can’t escape, a desperate hole…
the place for you, but you’re gone and so far away, though near.

No one can take your place. No one has ever has
And it would be unfair to any one to pretend they could.
Don’t come back to me, but forward to a new life we’d share.
I believe, I believe, I will believe that in Him it could be.

I would fulfill the promise I made, to love you with my life.
To be kind, gentle, unselfish, believe the good, be faithful to our new love.
All the lessons I have learned, with scars and all I am, though broken.
If only… if only… I had one more chance to love you true.

It was early. The time of day when people get up to catch the tide and go fishing. The foursome were staying at Patrick’s family’s house in Bloxom, Virginia. A place of potato farms and pine trees in the sandy soil. People who didn’t grow up there moved there to retire, as Patrick’s parents were planning some day.
This morning they were going to a destination to watch the sun come up, a place that Carole knew from a famous kids book – Misty of Chincoteague, about a horse and pony swims across the bay between Assateague and Chincoteague Island. Wild horses lived on Assateague Island and do even today, roaming among the National Seashore dunes in herds. Only Patrick had ever been there. Louise and Carole and Howard, sleepy though they were, were excited… to be together, in that cool summer morning before the heat came up, driving to the ocean.
Down the long road, across the marshes, the colors of the dawn filled their view – the indigo and yellow/reds of the dawn. With the windows down, the salty marsh air filled the car. Tall dunes stood in front of them when they parked on the deserted lot. Still no sign of the ocean, but they could hear it.
Walking up and over the boards to cross the sand, suddenly the view of the ocean appeared in front of them. As far as they could see, ocean and sand dunes and grasses. Sandcrabs scurried among the shells and stones, seagulls and sandpiper racing the waves. Nothing Howard had ever seen compared to this breathtaking moment. The wonder of what had been created in this place by the work of God. The absolute overwhelming joy to be there, with Carole most of all, and with their closest friends. All the love in his heart for her, for God, for life was impossible to articulate.
They walked hand in hand down the beach and back. His soul was changed to be there with her. His DNA changed, she was imprinted into his heart, his being. Love as pure as it could be, this gift from God.
Assateague would be the place that was theirs. In years to come they would come back again and again. The dunes would get smaller, but maybe they stayed the same, only the memory of that first time would make them remembered so tall.
To be back there again, with her, t-shirt and cut off blue jean shorts, barefoot, hand in hand, walking for miles… that was the definition of being in love.

We’d meet there, that halfway point, between your house and mine. A grassy hill inside the park, protected by trees and quiet. There the rabbits would come out to play, to chase and eat and romance hours away. Coming home from a weekend stay I’d meet you there. I walked and ran, impatient to be with you.

On that hill we sat, lay among the clover looking at the sky and talked the evening away. Then the long walk to your house, time was faster then, no doubt. There was never enough to be with you.

The way you slipped your hand in mine, the joy that filled my soul. I loved you then as now. What I would give to feel your fingers entwined in mine again.

We’re far away from the rabbits’ field, the place I held you close. Where our spirits knit and my soul tattooed with your face inside a heart.

I long for just one hour of so many we had then. To be close to you again, to smell your skin, and hear your heart.

Perhaps tonight I’ll dream a dream to take me back to that hill, and see your face, and kiss your lips, and be where the rabbits run.

The park between his house and church and her grandmother’s house was a long green oasis in this part of Baltimore city. In the middle of it was a stream, called a “run” and the name of it was “Herring”. Perhaps back in the day there were herring “running” in the stream but by the 60’s and 70’s there were none to be found.

He spent a lot of his childhood in Herring Run park, pretending to be a soldier or a ninja or a great baseball player for the Boys Club. It was baseball that was his claim to fame when he was younger. Being a head taller than most of his peers, long-legged and strong he was a pretty good pitcher, could hit a home run now and then and was looked up to by most of his teammates. The league was a big deal in this area, with a parade to start the season, fund raising with chocolate Easter eggs by Mary Sue. His 3 brothers had all played in the league and he didn’t disappoint to make them proud, especially the opening day on a brand new field when he hit the first home run.

The park was where he would take a five iron and a couple balls. With a pop song in his head he would hit a ball as far as he could, walk to find it, hit it again, and then hit it back the same way he came. All the while being very pensive and humming the song rolling over and over in his head. “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign? ”
Thinking was comforting to him, mostly about girls, sometimes baseball and school and the future.
It was his sanctuary.

When they started to get close to each other, it wasn’t to be boyfriend and girlfriend. They were both part of a youth group at church. They would talk about the stories they read in the Bible and books about people of faith. They had both made the commitment to be Christians so talking about their faith was their common ground. It was part of the wonder of each of their lives.

She lived far enough away from their church, located on the park, that her parents would drive her to down and drop her off for the weekend. After the Friday night meetings she’d walk to her grandmother’s and stay till Sunday. Her grandmother lived on the opposite side of Herring Run, among in the neighborhoods of row homes.

After meetings he would walk with her to her grandmother’s. She was usually barefoot, even in winter, and known for for it. Her grandmother would convince her to put her Docksiders on for church, but they came off quickly as soon as she could.
When they walked through the park, taking the long way back to her grandmothers, sometimes they would go to a specific hill not far from the church and lay in the grass and talk. Long hours they would be there. Eventually at these moments she would lay her head on his shoulder and put her hand on his chest, every now and then swatting at mosquitoes and bugs intruding on their space.

He started to lift weights to impress her with his muscles, knowing she would touch his chest and arms. He was so in love with her, but enjoyed the fact the the physical hadn’t gotten in the way – they were two young people that just liked being together.
Eventually when it got very late, he would walk with her to her grandmothers, say good-night and float home to his house. Sometimes it would be very early in the morning, 1 or 2 am. He’d come in the door to his parents house, his mother at the top of the steps in the dark, whispering – “Howard?”
“yes Mom”
“where have you been?”
“with Carole”
“are you being careful?”
*a smile* “yes, Mom”.
“Try to get home earlier next time, Good-night, I love you”
“ok, I’ll try, Good-night, I love you, too”

His mother and Carole’s grandmother had conspired when they were very young to match them up when they were older. She loved Carole and was thrilled that they had become such close friends.

Once on the walk back to her grandmother’s, she stepped on a broken bottle hidden in the grass, cutting her bare heel. She could barely walk so he picked her up and carried her the rest of the way home. When they were close he could smell her shampoo, some kind of bubblegum fragrance. It was her fragrance no matter where it came from. Whenever he smelled it anywhere even years later, it always took him back to those nights in the park.

It wasn’t until many weeks of this routine of a long walk and laying on the hill talking, that one night she stood up, took him by the hand, they walked a little further down the hill from the street lights. She turned to him and they held each other and kissed for the first time.

His sanctuary had become a magical place, the scene of a love story and the one true love of his life. So few people ever experience that magic and he would never be the same and no one would ever be able to take her place.

They both went to school outside of their neighborhoods. She to a private Catholic school and he to a public engineering school farther from hers.

The bus lines were the primary way they both commuted to school, that is when they couldn’t bum a ride from a parent or friends. His school was a starting point for the 44 line after school. It traveled east and passed about a mile south of her school.

He was out earlier than she and some days he would rush to ride, not his usual bus, the 22, that would take him home but the 44. He’d get off near her school, walk the mile and be there in time to see her come out the front exit. Then they would walk the mile back and catch the next 44 that would take them to her neighborhood.

Just the thought of seeing her made the entire day bearable.

They weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend, not yet anyway. They were both “believers”, part of the energetic and enthusiastic youth group of their church. This was a magical time in their lives. People in their church, old and young were getting together at prayer meetings and Bible studies in the homes of the older ones. Their friends were many in the groups and there were no barriers to age or ethnicity. They were a part of a movement, so called, in the 1970’s, a cross-denominational movement of people that were dedicated to the Christian faith and each other. Their association was of common love for God and wanting to know more and more about Him.

It was clear in his heart that he was in love with her. It wasn’t certain what she felt for him, but all the signals were there that she liked his company and the conversation.

Today he caught that 44 and took the short ride to go see her, though it seemed endless as he was anxious to see her, anxious to not miss her. Finally his stop, Leith Walk, just seeing it made him giddy, with that weird giggle deep in the throat that you get when joy just wells up.

He walked fast and came over the hill that was the last obstacle to seeing the front of her school. He waited, watching and watching, hoping he hadn’t missed her. Then there she was – in her worn out “saddles” with white sweat socks rolled down – the uniform required with the deep red skirt and white shirt covered with her soft yellow jacket. Her hair was long blondish-brown and thick. She had beautiful blue eyes and a few freckles. Her attitude in her walk was always a little “butch” – more tough guy than dainty wall flower. She had a mouth of big pearl teeth and smiling came to it often.

She seemed happy to see him. He offered to carry her books, sometimes she would let him. And they walked back down Leith Walk to catch the bus to her neighborhood. He didn’t always pay attention to the conversation, he was floating and so happy to be with her. It was part of the magic of that time of his life.

One of many such long walks and sometimes would lead to him being asked to dinner by her parents.

Yes magic. TImes that he would never forget and he wondered later in life if she ever remembered.