Sunday Drive: If You Hadn't Been There

I'm sure all my truckbuddies will join in my condolences to Dolly - a longtime supporter of the gay community - who lost her huband Carl this week after 60 years of marriage.  What a blessing.

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Sunday Drive: Over the Rainbow

 -- where bluebirds fly,

dreams come true, and

what was lost is found.

Comet.

Planet.

The pictures show us as we were nearly twenty years after we were young lovers.  By that time, we both had been through great suffering of mind or body, and we both had loved and buried other husbands.

Our love was joyful; our parting was painful in the extreme.  But he had to be true to his nature, and I to mine.  He loved to be on the road, I loved to be at home; it just couldn't work.  So we lived the lives we needed to live, and took the consequences.  We both were right, we both were wrong.  Passionate love is a sweet and bitter cup.

But perhaps it simply had to be that way, to teach us both the lessons we needed to learn.  (And the lesson is repeated until it is learned.)

Yet somehow, by different long and winding orbits, we have come face to face again, across the worlds.  Loved.  Understood.  Forgiven.  At peace with each other, and more besides.  A knowing:  don't ask me to explain.

I've learned a great deal in just the last two weeks, which I couldn't begin to describe here on the Blue Truck - about myself, about Karl, about love and life and other people too.  Believe me when I tell you, it's been a completely unexpected, unsought epiphany - a strange and wonderful gift.  

In the only grammar and vocabulary I know, grace has happened, and made a change in me:  I once was blind, but now I see.  Probably nothing you would notice on the outside, but within, an ineffable healing that words can hardly express.  Some kind of enlightenment.  And quiet happiness.

So I'm just going to sit with it now and ponder these things, rejoicing.  Alleluia.  

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Epiphany 2023: Planet and Comet

Planet and Comet

   for Karl, 1966-2020

I was at the noon of life, you were in midmorning

That June in February when we kissed and fell

In love, too soon for sense, too strong for caution.

But oh, how lovely did the moon smile down on us!

We seemed to dance among the stars, they seemed to reel 

About our heads, and in your eyes I saw reflected

All my own forever dreams; felt your heartbeat thrum

In tune with mine, a summer song – too soon to end.

I watched for your return a long and lonely while.

In time, forsaken passion mellows into quietude

As green leaves turn to gold and rust

And flames die down to embers,

Souvenirs of light and heat and joy

When graybeards huddle by the hearth,

Remembering summer's caressing kiss,

The south wind’s warm embrace.

Comparisons are odious, of course.

We each must walk an unmarked path

Through barren wastes or fields of gold

To gather thorns and roses where we may

And water them with memories.

Who knows but that our found and lost

Are lessons learned to pave the way

For other joys to come: salt water into wine.

The stars swing on, thirty years have gone:

Time out of mind.  I can hardly comprehend, 

Cannot count that high.  It seems absurd,

So many steady rounds about the sun.

Never thought that I would end up here

At this cold, far place, an old man now,

So long removed from dancing days,

Leaning on a cane, shuffling through snow.

And still the music of the spheres plays faintly on

I hear it now and then behind the winter wind . . .

But suddenly you’re here, O my beloved wanderer—

Why this epiphany so late?  Why did we have to wait?

Never mind.  Oh, what a strange, unlooked-for joy!

For one sweet moment to dance the dance again,

To feel again – and know – your summer warmth,

The gravity of your embrace:  a love that knows no end.

Copyright 2023 by Russ Manley.  All rights reserved.

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With special thanks to my truckbuddy Frank, who unwittingly gave me the springboard for this poem.

Published on the day of the Full Wolf Moon.

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Answer Desk: What We Had

Question:  So like, what was the BFD about all that?  Seems like nothing much happened.  Can't you even post a pic of the two of you together?

Answer:  This is what we had and lost:

 

Christian and Olli were characters in a German soap opera.  

We looked nothing like them, but the passion was the same.

That kind of love is the divine flame at its brightest and hottest.

It burns deep.  It cuts to the quick.  It penetrates and glorifies.

It melds and molds and fuses two hearts into one.  

It's more than physical, more than thought

More than words and bodies

More than touching 

More than feeling

It's knowing

It's home

To lose your other half is mortal agony.

If you survive, if blood and breath remain, then

You can live again, love again, laugh again.

But you will sometimes cry again.

Love will not let you go.

Fighting, yelling, kissing, crying, fucking, facing off:

"Why'd it have to be you?" I said through my tears.

"Why'd it have to be you?" he replied through his.

But I'm okay today. I've reflected and processed a lot in the past week. Realized how far I've come, and how much stronger I am now.  

And we've - how can I say this without sounding sappy? - well, I'll just say I know now that he's finally okay, and it's okay between us. I don't have to keep him locked out of my heart anymore, no longer have to bar the doors against his approach.  The barb wire's down.

What's past is done, gone, forgiven on both sides.  The war's over: peace has come.  The hurt is gone.  What was lost is found.

We're good again.  Here again.

Love is stronger than death.

And that's a good way to start the new year: with a clear head, quiet heart, and gratitude for this happy life M.P. and I share.  It's all good.

New Year's blessings and best wishes to all my truckbuddies.

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In Memoriam: The Dance

My first husband in 2009, the last time I heard from him.
By chance, I just recently learned that he died in 2020, age 54.
By all accounts, he loved his life and was much loved.

Thirty Years Ago

We Danced.

Planet & Comet

Took a Big Chance.

Big Love.  Big Loss.  

Big Hurt -- Long Time.

Hard Lesson.

All Forgiven.   

Bless you, Babe.  

Roll on through Heaven.

Russ in 2009.
Everybody's got to leave the darkness sometime.

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World AIDS Day 2013

I posted this video a couple of years ago, but I like it so much, I'm posting it again. I can never forget when my first husband and I visited D.C. to see the Quilt displayed in 1992 - as soon as we arrived on the Mall and I saw all those acres of panels spread across the grass, I burst into tears, and wept off and on all afternoon. My best friend Tommy had died of the plague a couple of years before, and of course we knew others who were soon to die.

It seems to be a forgotten issue now, since there are the pills to control the virus - but I've known people who have to live with that pill routine, which means taking handfuls two or three times every day, and dealing with all the side effects too. It may keep you going, but it's not a great way to live.

Of course, that's if you can get the pills. Millions all around the world can't. So the fight goes on - do something if you can.

For Tommy and all the others--




Update, 12/2: President Obama today announced the launch of a $100 million initiative to find a cure for AIDS:

Bridegroom

I've blogged about this video before, and now it's completed (filmed by Linda Bloodworth Thomason, creator of Designing Women, among other things) and opening today at theaters in New York and Los Angeles.  You can also get it via Amazon or Barnes and Noble at the official website. Read the updated background story at Americablog.

The story, of course, reminds your Head Trucker powerfully of what happened when my darling Cody died eight years ago.

Bridegroom

Just debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York:

BRIDEGROOM is a documentary directed by Linda Bloodworth-Thomason that tells the emotional journey of Shane and Tom, two young men in a loving and committed relationship — a relationship that was cut tragically short by a misstep off the side of a roof. The story of what happened after this accidental death– of how people without the legal protections of marriage can find themselves completely shut out and ostracized– is poignant, enraging and opens a window onto the issue of marriage equality like no speech or lecture ever will.

Your Head Trucker can relate. For the background to the story and more movie info see bridegroommovie.com.

It Could Happen to You

Marriage fucking well matters, don't you ever say it doesn't. Longtime Blue Truck readers will recognize the similarities between this tragic story of Shane and Tom, and my story that I've blogged about several times over the years since I lost my Cody.



Now Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, writer and creator of Designing Women and other acclaimed TV shows, wants to turn their story into a documentary. She writes:

In March of 1986, my mother was diagnosed with AIDS, after receiving a contaminated blood transfusion. This occurred just as the pilot for “Designing Women” was getting underway. As I wrote much of the first season, sitting beside my mom, I was witness to the incredible prejudice and prevailing ignorance inflicted not just on her, but all the homosexual men who shared her hospital floor. Because of this, I was honored to write the Emmy nominated DW episode, “Killing all the Right People,” which was television’s first scripted show to tackle the hateful prejudice surrounding gays and AIDS.

Little did I know that I would someday be provided with another opportunity to address this same kind of bigotry. It all began when I attended a gay wedding ceremony in Palm Springs, California. That night, a couple of unforgettable, young men named Shane and Tom joined my table. I learned they were “Designing Women” fans, madly in love and literally brimming with all their big plans for an exciting life together. Sadly, that possibility ended when Tom was killed in an accident last year. When I heard the news, I was haunted by the sheer weight of Shane’s loss. Even though I barely knew them, their good-hearted demeanors and earnest love had made an indelible impression on me.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw Shane’s YouTube posting, along with his bone crushing grief and the story of what happened to him after Tom’s death—and all because they were never allowed to marry. Like so many others who saw this video, I was deeply touched. And angered. I called Shane and invited him to my office. I told him I wanted to make a documentary that would tell his and Tom’s love story from beginning to end. I have now seen all of Shane and Tom’s videos and home movies. Like a lot of young people, they routinely documented their lives—but this recorded history is so prolific, it almost seems as though they had a premonition or unconscious fear of not getting to live out something important.

Tom and Shane were each other’s first and only loves. They are devoted, hardworking, unassuming and funny. Each is from a small town and each, in his own way, is imbued with the best kind of small town values. They are, in fact, the sort of young people who hold within themselves the promise of America. And that is why I want to bring to life, on film, this real life Romeo and Romeo—so that all who condemn them, might come face to face with exactly what it is they are opposing.

Certainly the fact that Tom’s last name is Bridegroom is a lucky and serendipitous gift to a filmmaker. But it is so unusual, even a skeptic would find it hard not to also feel that Tom, in his own way, is now standing in for something larger than himself. I can think of no more powerful opportunity to change hearts and minds on this very important issue of human rights, than to tell the story of Shane and Tom, which at its core, is the struggle of all people who yearn to be who they are and love who they love.

You can help make it happen. Donate as little as $5 here. It's a story that needs to be told, and told, and told again, as I have told mine.

But as Shane said, if we don't talk, nobody will listen. So if marriage matters to you - put your money where your mouth is. Even if it's just the price of a latte, just do it. Now. And feel proud of making sure the bastards don't grind us all back into the bottom of the closet forever, as they would love to do.

Sunday Drive: Chopin, Nocturne in E-flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2

My late husband was a past master of the piano as well as the organ, and this lovely piece - a favorite of his - is one I have listened to many times in his memory since I lost him seven years ago today.

Lacrimae Rerum

I've been meaning to post this for some time now, but not until this minute have I gotten around to making the necessary scan.  The oldest thing I own is a scrap of paper:  a single leaf from a notebook kept by my great-grandfather nearly 140 years ago. 



He was 24 when he recorded these verses.
Click to enlarge.

I'll tell you how I came to possess this.  My grandparents were the sort of hard-working country-bred people who, though literate, were not the type to keep much reading material lying around, save for the daily newspaper and the family Bible which sat for years, largely unread, on the telephone table in the living room.  But behind the front door was an old homemade cabinet with doors that fastened by a chunk of wood that pivoted on a nail - a thing of utility, not beauty - repainted every few years in the same tan color as the living room walls, but mostly ignored. 

Until one day in my early adolescence, when I decided to explore the contents.  The cabinet held three shelves, full of old herb catalogs and physical culture magazines dating back to the 1920's - my grandfather was a great one for believing in home remedies, and was acknowledged by all to be the family expert on such things - as well as some dusty religious books and tracts, old letters, and the odd catalog of tools and useful implements.   And the stray outdated textbook or novel, doubtless acquired when my father and his sisters were young, and long since forgotten by them. 

Some of these things were interesting to read by themselves.  But the most exciting find I made was three books:  one seemed truly ancient, with what seemed a home-made black leather cover, cracked with age, the pages of which were nubbly, not smooth like more modern paper.  It seemed a book of songs or poems:  I remember one verse was in celebration of "Washington, and Adams too," so it must have been from somewhere around the year 1800.

The second find was a much-worn but still tightly bound copy of Noah Webster's famous blue-backed speller, from the mid-19th century.  It seemed that every lesson began with an illustration of a short morality poem; the one I remember drew a contrast between two schoolboys, Punctual and Dilatory I think.  Naturally, Punctual was the one who succeeded while Dilatory fell by the wayside.

And the third of these antique treasures was the little notebook of my great-grandfather's that I mentioned above:  made of ruled paper, no more than about 3 by 5 inches, missing a cover but painstakingly filled on nearly every page with neatly written quotations from poets and playwrights, along with the occasional note of the price of corn, a home remedy for some ailment, a remark on some unusual weather, or even the exact tally of the nationwide popular vote for a presidential election, culled from a New York paper he must have subscribed to:  the collected musings of a young man who, though he never got further than the 8th grade, if even that far, was nevertheless of keen mind and had an ear for a well-turned phrase, a pleasing poem.

As I do, though I lived in more fortunate times and was able to get a good education.  Which for me, looking at his jotted fragments of thought, reveals a link across the centuries, a testimony of the continuity of something human, some essence of spirit.  I never knew the old man - he died half a century before I was born - and I don't feel particularly sentimental about him.  There are others I might have ended this year's postings with, more near and dear to my heart, starting with my own dear parents and others.  But somehow it seems fitting to end the year with this small bridge across the river of Time. 

Alas, having made these rather exciting discoveries - for even then, I was more interested in the past than the future - I made the great mistake of telling everyone in the family what I had found.  It was not long before some more senior relation confiscated all three treasures - "for safekeeping," of course - and I never saw them again.  Doubtlessly, they have long since been bequeathed to some other descendant, who may very well care little for them and be unaware of their significance.  Since I am the last of my grandfather's line to bear his name, I would have felt it only right that they descend to me - oh but some things are not worth the fight and feud that would result, you know what I mean, fellas?

How this single page came to rest among my keepsakes, I have no idea now.  I certainly would not have torn it out of the notebook.  Perhaps it just came loose on its own, and I stuck it inside another book to preserve it.  Whatever the facts were, I'm glad I have this charming little memento of a bygone day.  The famous Lewis Carroll poem about the crocodile is just the sort of thing I delighted in as a child - and still do.  How gratifying to find that it appealed to my great-grandfather as well.

Tonight, I am struck by the last quotation on the back of the page, which is from Gray's Elegy, written in 1750 and immensely popular for the next two hundred years, until the advent of our jet-fueled, damn-fool era.  Since it is partly obscured, I reprint the stanza here; and if any of my truckbuddies is familiar with this classic work, or will take the trouble to read it, I think you will agree that it also is fitting to end the year, and these reflections, with.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Farewell to All That

It's been all over the news lately, but in case you haven't heard that Kodachrome film is no more:



Now, a note for posterity: Kodak made a number of varieties of film in addition to Kodachrome, which was used by people who could afford expensive cameras - the kind you can adjust the speed and aperture of - to take slides or movies or professional photos. Certainly a lot of middle-class people did, but some families, including mine, never had such fancy cameras. The Kodak film I always used to take snapshots with had a different name - and come to think of it, what was that? - Kodacolor, maybe. Not the same thing as the much-lamented Kodachrome, which was much more expensive.

In fact, my family never even used color film until the very late 60's - black and white film was cheaper, say $1.50 a roll compared to $2.50 a roll for color - so my parents stayed with that, and the black and white TV sets too, for a long time. It was what people were used to, you know, and for that matter, most magazines and books had only b&w pictures on the inside pages until the 1980's (except perhaps for colorful advertisements - and also excepting Playboy and that ilk).

So I never used Kodachrome, and its demise touches me only tangentially as a sign of the times, the inexorable flow of days and years, the unending loss of the present moment, the familiar, the expected. There's a comfort in the usual patterns of life which is always being eaten away at the edges, as the waves pull at the sands of the seashore. Everything in this mortal life is transitory, impermanent as a dream no matter how solid it may seem. Including our very selves and all that we hold dear.

Be that as it may, there are compensatory additions from time to time. Who now could do without a microwave oven? Which I recall was, forty years ago, strictly a luxury item, very expensive, which took me a couple of decades to see the use of. Now I use it all the time, practically every hour of the day when I'm at home: a most useful invention.

Cell phones are another great convenience - even though your Head Trucker still hasn't figured out how to take a picture with his, and doesn't much care. I marvel now that we used to take long road trips to see family and friends perhaps a thousand or more miles away - and embarked merrily on the journey, trusting only to God and Chevrolet against the chance of being broken down and stranded on some lonesome stretch of highway, far from any help. I don't even go to the grocery store now without my phone, but we were braver in those days.

Your Head Trucker has, however, gotten the hang of using a digital camera, and boy howdy, what a treat it is. I've had my little Kodak C-330 for five years now, and I dearly love it. In my teens and young adult years, I used to have a vague hankering to learn photography - at one time there was a PBS how-to show on the subject that I used to watch sometimes. But it required a really good single-reflex camera to start with, which was beyond my pocketbook for many years. Then too, it seemed to be de rigeur that to be a real photographer, you had to have your own darkroom and know how to use it - which required more expense, and space that I never had anywhere I lived. So that was a little daydream that never went anywhere.

But the digital camera was a revelation. Suddenly, for only $150 or so, I found I could take endless pictures from all angles in all kinds of light, and actually produce a few that were worth keeping - all quite easily and cheaply. You can even see the picture on your camera screen as soon as you take it, and know whether to try again. And no counting frames, or worrying about how much it would cost to develop all the photos you took - very liberating, and a new creative outlet that I've enjoyed immensely. A very good change, despite all the laments over the passing of film: the expense of film and equipment made it a hobby only for the affluent.

And then, of course, there's the internet, which is quite frankly a godsend to anyone who lives in the sticks as I do. And for people who live in town, too: an unending source of entertainment, communication, and creative endeavor that as far as I'm concerned is an unquestioned necessity now. In recent weeks, for unrelated reasons, both the ex-roommate and I have each experienced a few days without internet service. And we both agree, it was nearly unbearable - just as much as if the water were turned off.

Which is odd, when I stop and think about it. I perfectly recall life before home computers - I used them at work a long time before I got one of my own, in 1999 - and how I was quite content to come home and in my leisure time read a book, call a friend, or simply flop in front of the TV. But now times have changed, and I've changed. Life is that way; the tide is always tugging at you, pulling you on, whether you will or no.

So we must always be balancing the losses against the gains, and adjusting to the shifts and turns of life. And always, human life is a mixed bag of blessings and curses, advances and retreats. Just yesterday, for example, surfing through Wikipedia with no particular goal in mind, as I am wont to do, I stumbled across this paragraph in an article about a British politician most Americans have probably never heard of, Roy Jenkins:

As Home Secretary from 1965–1967, he sought to build what he described as "a civilised society", with measures such as the effective abolition in Britain of capital punishment and theatre censorship, the decriminalisation of homosexuality, relaxing of divorce law, suspension of birching and the legalisation of abortion.

Perhaps all that is well and good - but it did give me pause. More than four decades later, is our Western civilization really a more "civilized society" than it was before the 1960's?

PRR ad, 1948

Or merely different? Human nature never changes, merely the outward forms and fashions. All our scheming, inventing, and rearranging may make the world more comfortable in some ways - but convenience is not quite the same as progress - is it?

Only one thing is certain:  you can't go home again.

In Memoriam: My Father

Circa 1965

Forty years ago today, my father died suddenly, tragically, unexpectedly.  He was 56.  I was 15.  Just barely beginning to know him as a person and not merely as Dad.

I'm just a year younger now than my father was. Strange to think. He would have been 96 now, had he lived so long.

I don't want to go into the story.  Just remembering now - and wondering about all that would or could or might have been different had he lived. 

Certainly it was very difficult growing into manhood an only child with no other father figures around, no uncles or brothers or cousins or anyone nearby to emulate.  Or care.  I felt that lack very deeply for many years. 

Lots of female relatives, and of course my darling Mama - but not a father.  There's just some real important stuff you can't learn from women, ya know what I mean fellas?

Eventually, at the end of high school I found a couple of butch buddies to more or less model myself after, which helped some.  I've always been grateful for what I learned from them, just by association.  But it's not the same thing. 


Rest in peace, Daddy.



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Lovelight: I Will Always Love You

Whatever else may happen in my life, this I can say:  I loved, and I was loved.

This is my testimony to the world:  the story of a life together.

Two men and a little fuzzy dog, no better than they ought to be, in a tiny Texas town far out on the prairie, far from the madding crowd.  Wanting nothing more than to be left alone, to live out their lives together in peace and happiness just like everybody else.

A small house, a small town, a small, obscure life.  Nothing the world noticed, or cared to know about.   Nothing that anyone will remember a hundred years from now. 

But it was ours, and this is our story.

A love that will never grow old.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Five Years

My Cody won the Texas Piano Guild competion when he was 15, and placed sixth in the nationals.  Although he preferred the organ because its complexity was more challenging - he went on to obtain a bachelor's in organ, with minor in harpsichord - he could play the piano like nobody's business.  Just like this.

One of his old piano teachers played this nocturne at his funeral, and it sounded to me as if Cody himself were playing.  This (by some other artist than the one in the video) was one of a handful of recordings I played over and over again in the weeks and months after his death.

Music was his great passion, his raison d'etre. It brought me great comfort to think of him playing more and more glorious music somewhere, unimpeded by the limitations of this mortal coil.  He used to complain that it was very difficult to master a piece by Chopin or Liszt - they must have had such huge hands! he would say.  But he was a cowboy too, and master them he did.

Five years ago today, I awoke a widower.  That awful day.

It's hard to believe five years have gone by already.  We had only a little more than five years together.

A great loss; but better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all, as Tennyson said.  And I know that Cody loved me:  something no one can ever take away from me.

The cosmic irony is that we both had already loved and lost before, one way or another.  And when we found each other, at rather a late age, we neither of us dreamed that fate could be so cruel to us again, so soon. 

But it was that cruel. 

Or yet should I say, fate was that kind:  to allow us both a time of love and healing, of comfort and joy, before the dark waters parted us again.

I'm not writing to gain anyone's sympathy here; the time for all that is long past now. 

I'm just sharing a lovely memory, which sustains me to this day.  And the lesson that all in this life is temporary.  All of it.

So enjoy what you have, whether little or much - enjoy it today, fellas, and be grateful for it.  Because you never know what smiles or tears the morrow will bring.

Cody at our first meeting in New Orleans, November 1998.

The Movie That My Parents Made

They met and married in law school:  love at first sight, a whirlwind romance, a romantic elopement.  Today would have been their 63rd anniversary.

Requiescant in pacem.

Older now than they were then
gazing at their youthful faces
strong and confident, unafraid
of all that life would bring
and throw against them, not
knowing then how awful and
how wrong it all would end.

Older now than they were then
struck by their youthful beauty
remembering, barely, their
unlined faces and the quick
movements of their bodies when
I was just a child and did not know
how wrong it all would end.

Older now than they were then
enough in fact to be the parent
of either one, stretching out
a warning hand, I call to them
Look out, turn back, do not proceed
into that dark night, you do not know
how wrong, so wrong, it all will end.

Older now than they were then
the single fruit of that mad cleaving
only I am left to grieve their story
and I alone foresee the plot will
wind and twist about like mangled
sheets and strangle every hope
and know how wrong it all will end.

Older now than they were then
mourning the untroubled faces
the black ringlets, the red curls
that tangled softly once on
pillowed dreams, but grew
like tendrils in a nightmare land
of bile and blood where love
sweet love would end so wrong.

Stop. Go back. Do not do this thing.
Love is not all. Courage is not enough.
Youth will not last, nor tenderness.
Please turn that car around
before you cross the fateful border,
go back into your separate lives,
for love’s own sake. My phantom cry
falls voiceless on their unhearing ears.

So on and on the story goes,
nothing now can stop the denouement,
the weeping end, the fade to black.
All must be what it must be. And I
step out into the glare of lights
and cameras, the action of forgiveness
playing out the sequel to their story
which must not end so wrong.

Oh Love

Lovelight: Need You Now

Love doesn't always turn out like it should . . . .

 

Another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door.
Wishing you'd come sweeping in the way you did before.
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind.
For me it happens all the time.

It's a quarter after one, I'm a little drunk,
And I need you now.
Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control
And I need you now.
And I don't know how I can do without,
I just need you now.

Been there, done that.

Goodnight, guys.



(The official music vid - unembeddable -is here if you want to watch.)

Sunday Drive: Grace Happens

"Wherever You Are" by Mary Chapin Carpenter

Cody, 1998

My sweet cowboy

We met online ten years ago tonight. From a thousand miles away, his voice came through the wire like a warm rain, a familiar embrace, an old friend. A lifeline; I was sad and alone, drowning my sorrows and running out of gas on a dark and unfamiliar road. We both had loved and lost, tragically so; not much reason remained for going on.
 

But somehow, against all odds, we found each other in the darkness; we held on tight, and we never let go. Tonight, all those years ago, my life and his changed for better, for worse--forever. Oh yeah, we had our ins and outs like every couple; as my mama used to say, you have to take the bitter with the sweet--but the good parts were very, very good. We fit together, like a pair of comfortable old boots. After so many false starts, so many dead end roads, finally--finally--we found the way home.

We had five years together; a great loss, a big big hurt when he died, all unexpected. But some people never get that much. I'm glad we did.

So what was the point of all that? Perhaps just this: in a very needed way, it healed me, it healed him; two lost, lonely travelers pulled out of the bar ditch, put back on the pavement. Grace.

We were brought together in that time and place for a reason, no one can tell me different. How and why, I can't say, can't explain. All I know is this: grace happens. It just does, sometimes, some places, some people now and then, and that's all the theology I'm sure of anymore.

Grace happens. When and where are not of our choosing. Road maps and explanations not provided; we have to figure it out on our own, learn to enjoy the gift of this particular moment, every moment we are given in this short, short life. And give what you have to give, without holding back. With all your heart.

Even the smallest kindness counts. That's why you're there; to do that small deed of love, of grace.

Gratitude; gracias; grace. Something you just have to live through to understand.