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.