LOST AND FOUND: Part 3

I thought I had a boring life, but now realize it is not so boring after all. In Part 2, I told you about my long lost love and how I'd finally found him again albeit 1400 miles away. We are still both married to our long

time partners and living in a fairy tale dream. We know in our hearts we will probably never be together again in this life, but we still need to communicate. We do that by sending emails and text messages several times a day. But some times the day gets away from us and we respond too late for an answer back and have to wait for the next day, which is okay because we are aware of each other's commitment to home and work, so when we can we respond. 

I have no one to talk to about this because I have no friends close enough that I would confide in. I have a

daughter that I thought maybe, just maybe she would listen to me and understand what I am going through and at least empathize with me if not necessarily agree with me on this issue that is causing so much emotional turmoil.

I was able to spend some time with with her this weekend with the grand children and the great grand children and had a wonderful time. When I got home that night there was an email from my friend telling me how much he had missed me and was glad I was home safely. I tried in a round about way to tell him that

this was all just too much for me to handle right now, but he didn't take the bait instead he wrote me a

beautiful note of how much he loved me and and would until the end of time. 

Well, dummy me, I wanted my daughter to see what he was saying to me and how genuine he sounds when he tells me he loves me and will continue to do so even if it is a dream. I wanted her to comment on it.

My, God, did I open a Pandora's box. She let loose on me with more venom than I'd ever heard from her. She told me that he didn't want me 40 some odd years ago, and he doesn't want me now, period. I felt hurt and betrayed by her. She knows I married her step-dad on the rebound, but I kept the pain hidden so deeply inside that no one neither she nor my husband would ever suspect there may be love for someone else hidden deep inside.

My husband started out being a very good provider, but as the years passed he showed more and more signs of depression and wouldn't seek treatment. He went through job after job, because he was unhappy for  some reason or other and then he was diagnosed with bi-polar disease which helped to explain a lot of things that were going on with work and everything. He's being medicated, but is still sick and in pain all the time and doesn't feel like doing the simplest thing. Am I tired, yes I am. I won't lie.

For whatever reason my daughter thinks we had this great marriage until a few years ago, but she wasn't there to see the deterioration. She told me yesterday that if I was so unhappy in my marriage to get a divorce or get off the dating sites. I for the life of me cannot understand why she would say something like that. This is the first time I have ever looked for love or companionship outside of my marriage, in fact I would be afraid to. I'm  uncomfortable with the situation with my 1400 mile away friend, but I'm not going anywhere because he can't get a divorce. He is 75 years old and too old to start over again and his wife would take everything he had and leave him homeless and penniless.

Short story long we are star-crossed lovers that are not meant to be together. When I made the phone call to him I never expected things to take the direction they did, but such is life. My daughter said some very hurtful things to me and I can't at this point forgive her.

Does any one have a comment on this Down in the Dumps person in Louisiana? All thoughts positive or negative are appreciated.

Love Lost and Found - Part 2

You read my mother's story in my last blog, now is the real reason for the first paragraph of that first blog.

I told you my mother was a waitress and through her I met my one true love, an Air Force Sgt. originally
from Oklahoma, but was stationed at a base near us. I fell in love with him the moment I first laid eyes on
him. He was handsome with the darkest hair and the lightest blue eyes I'd ever seen. He had a lot of
Native American, specifically Cherokee blood in him and he would be described in some romance novels as a ruggedly handsome brave warrior.

I loved him very much and on some level I believe he loved me too, but situations change. After we'd been together for a year he volunteered to go back to Vietnam for his third tour. It was getting close to the TET offensive in Cambodia and the Air Force asked for volunteers. He told me it was just for ninety days, but it ended up being six months.

My love for him had not diminished, but my guts told me when he volunteered to return to Vietnam, it was the beginning of the end for us. I just had this feeling. Shortly before he had volunteered, his ex-wife had made plans to move with their two sons close to the base where he was stationed in north Louisiana. She'd already shipped their belongings and was to arrive any day when she changed her mind, very much to my delight. So, as I said, I knew it was the beginning of the end.

When my love returned from Vietnam, six months later, he was only there for three days and then left to go to Denver where his ex lived. When he returned a week later, he was remarried to her.

I didn't know what to say. I was hurt. I was humiliated. I was crushed inside. I tried to act like I understood, but truth was I didn't understand anything. My heart was broken and I ached inside. I cried a lot an awful lot, but what could I do? He'd already made his decision and I did understand about his boys. I wanted to hurt him, so I told him that someday somehow he would get paid back for treating people the way he did. I told him he just couldn't go around hurting people the way he did. He said he was sorry, but it felt hollow to me.

A few months later, I met a young man who was funny and made me laugh and he said he loved me. I knew in that moment that I would marry him and let him take me away from the misery I was in and would continue to be in if I stayed near the man I truly loved. Don't get me wrong I cared for the young man who professed his love for me, but it was not the same gut-wrenching, heart-breaking love I felt for the other.

We've been married nearly forty years and have managed to stay together, but the last few years have been a strain on both of us, I think.

As I was talking with my mother before she passed away we talked about the man I'd loved for so many years and how I'd never stopped loving him. That's when I decided to call him. My mother had found some pictures of him and his Air Force unit and had kept them all these years, so I called him on the pretext of offering to return those pictures, so his wife wouldn't get too angry. I thought by now she'd have figured out she'd won and wouldn't care if I called.

No one answered the phone which turned out to be her cell phone. She showed him the number and he listened to the message I'd left. A couple of days later he returned my call and we both cried. Here we were a seventy-five year old man and a sixty-two year old woman crying like babies on the phone. When I told him I'd never stopped loving him, that's when his dam broke, mine had already broken the moment I heard his voice.

We haven't seen each other and we haven't made plans to do so and we've only talked on the phone three or four times in the months since I made that fateful call. We correspond by email several times a day. He is still healthy and is involved in many civic activities and is asked to participate in several of the Native American activities in the area where he lives, even though he isn't a full-blooded Cherokee. He respects the tribes in the area and does some work at the Native American University near where he lives. He grew up to become an amazing man. I like him much better now than I did when we were younger.

I don't know if I'll be able to go through the rest of my life without seeing him one last time, only time will tell about that. He has a lot to lose, me not so much,, except a husband who needs me as a companion, but loves me just the same. I love him too, I'm just not in love with him. That's my story of Love Lost and Found.

Love Lost and Found - part 1

Have you ever found love only to find you've lost it? Then with one simple phone call to that person after
forty years you find that love renewed. A person can go through a life time carrying a love in their heart
that never waned one little bit. The person married and spent those years with someone they cared for
but for which didn't have that all consuming love.

My mother was dying and we were talking about her life and the man she'd loved over seventy
years ago who had been killed in WWII, when a Japanese plane dive-bombed his ship. They were
planning to marry when he returned home from the war. She found out he had been killed when the Navy returned all her letters to him, and then from his brother whom she'd befriended. She kept in contract with his
family in Indiana for many years, but then the correspondence stopped.

By now she'd married the first of her two horrific husbands. The first my father was a cheater and the
second, my step-father was a beater. After divorcing the beater, my mother was never in a real, serious
relationship again. She chose to live her life alone rather than subject herself to either of those types of
men again. She raised four children to be good, up-standing people. My mother was a very intelligent
woman and could have been or done anything she wanted in life, except for the fact those two men
took all her self-confidence away. She held different jobs through the years, but she always went back
to waitressing, which she loved. My mother never met a stranger and everyone she knew loved her
genuine outgoing spirit.

She worked very hard all her life and end the end suffered greatly with COPD, until she passed away December 1, 2011 at the age of 86. I truly believe that she found her one true love when she got to
Heaven where I am certain she is finally happy in her life.