Time’s A Funny Thing

This piece will be the final chapter in my third book “Notes To My Kids”.  It closes the story and repeats some of the themes I write about in the book.  I did something similar in “Days Remembered” with “Do You Remember?”.  The notes in this book are written to my kids “Roger” and “Jane” – I use these names for them in the other books you may recall.   Photo courtesy of www.imdb.com.

To Roger and Jane…

When you two were small children  the movie “Always” came out. It still is one of my personal favorites. In it Pete,  an air tanker pilot, played by Richard Dreyfus , gets killed in an accident. In the afterlife the guardian angel “Hap”, played by Audrey Hepburn, tries to guide him to final peace and acceptance of his fate.

In one scene he and Hap travel  back and forth in time where he sees his past. While they sit in some forest Hap tells the temporally confused Pete “…time’s a funny thing…”.  Indeed it is. I think you’ll see.

Jane, Roger came over to see me the day you went back to Galveston.  On New Year’s Eve day we went to eat at a Russian restaurant in Arlington. On the way we went through east Fort Worth where we used to live. And in a short time we went back and forth in time like Pete did in the movie.

After going down Loop 820 we exited  at Brentwood Stair Road. We drove down Brentwood  past the Kolache Shop, Little Tykes day care, and the bank building where your mom once worked. As we drove down Brentwood we talked about Best Mart, the convenience store we always used for gas, beer, and snacks  when we went to the New Park  a little north of there. We spent a lot of time at the playground or looking at the horses which were in the pasture next to it. The horses are no longer there; the pasture that they once grazed in is now a field of houses.

We turned down Sandy Lane and around us were the 1960’s era brick veneer homes surrounded by oak trees which looked much like they did when we lived there.  We took a left onto Monterrey Drive to see the old house itself. Similar to what we saw on Sandy, the houses seemed to be the same. Memories surfaced as we drove past the homes of our former neighbors like the Simpsons, the Jeffries – whose kids you played with, or Mrs. Shaw who was always in a bad mood.

And then we were in front of the old house itself. The big trees were still there, bigger than before, but the house was mostly the same. . The dormers still looked out over the front yard from your old rooms upstairs and the big tree in the middle of the back still cast its branches over the yard. The big bay window by the front door also looked the same: how many times did we peer out its frames to see what was outside? The owners had painted the red brick a medium gray but that was the only obvious change. And next to it there was Jess and Madge’s old house which really did look unchanged. At that moment I could see us there with Jess on a warm summer day. A grandfather, he would  smile  at you two and ask what you had been doing at school. Such things happened over 20 years ago but it seemed we were still there, as if time had stood still.

Coming back to the present  we turned around and went further down Sandy and there was the Old Park. The playground equipment that you two once scurried over was replaced with newer stuff.  But the trees remained along with the ball field, and at the north end of the park was our old backyard fence. The second story of the house and the big tree on the back property line still looked above its top. The year could have been 1985 or 1995 and it would have looked the same.

Next, we  continued south on Sandy  and drove past the cemetery, where Lee Harvey Oswald lies in his unmarked grave. Nothing much had changed, the same houses, buildings, and trees still stood guard  along the street where they had always  been.

We drove  on to Arlington and turned on to Lancaster to the east beside the railroad tracks, past unchanged areas of trees and pastures.. About the only new things were the gas wells in the fields. The leafless but timeless post oaks were still there, reaching quietly upward around the new wellheads and tanks.

When we got into Arlington we drove past the Campo Verde restaurant where we used to eat. I wondered if the food was as good as it was in the past. On the outside it looked the same as if  nearly twenty years hadn’t passed.  And as we neared the Russian place I saw another restaurant we’d frequented:  Jo-Ed’s Bomber which made northeastern style sub sandwiches. It, too, was seemingly unchanged.

After we ate at the Russian place, we went by a house on Bowen Road that your mom and I considered buying. We didn’t because it had a foundation leak in the garage. The neighborhood around it, like the old east side, hadn’t changed much. Time had passed  but you could not tell that just by driving through the area. That day was a trip down the Memory Lane seeing what once was the fabric of our lives. On the way to eat lunch we saw a big slice of our past in a couple of hours. Just as Pete saw his life go back and forth before his eyes in that short scene in “Always”, we saw a big part of our lives go by as we drove down those once frequently travelled roads.

So Hap was right you see, time is a funny thing. Things and places change and sometimes they don’t, even though decades have flown past. What was, still is even though the world and time has moved on, at least in our memories. Hence, they should not be forgotten, they should be tucked away in our hearts and minds to be  revisited from time to time. When we go back to seeing our old haunts  seeing where we came from and recalling important events from our lives  one more time.

Maybe that is why I write my books. Recording the past helps  me make drives like we did that day. In that way, the memory of our time together as a family will go down time’s own long road and be remembered by you, and hopefully one day by your own family and kids. Then you can tell them time’s a funny thing too just like Hap told Pete.

 

Saving Mr. Owl

How many of you have seen the movie “Saving Private Ryan”?  I have many times and own the movie on a  DVD.  In that movie a bunch of American GIs die to save another GI, Private Ryan. Now this note is not about that movie, or saving a soldier.  Instead it is about trying to save a baby owl which fell from a tree.

One day I drove over to Dallas for a job interview at 2:30.  I went in to the company’s building and had a nice talk.  I went back out to my car, took my off my stifling tie, and drove back home to Fort Worth.  I went inside my house, changed back into a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, and made a nice cold stiff drink.  I got back in my car and drove down to the park and stopped the car underneath a tall tree in the shade.  I made a couple of phone calls and relaxed listening to some talk radio out of Austin on KLBJ.

As I listened to some of the nutty callers taking to the host Jeff Ward I saw something I had never seen before.  A large baby bird dropped down to the ground flapping its wings right after a very high wind gust.  I looked closer and it was about 50% bigger than a large fat dove and seemed to be an owl of some type. I have seen baby birds in the grass that had fallen from their nest but never one like this or that large.

I sat in my car for a few minutes watching him.  He tried to fly a couple of times; he would flap his wings and go a few feet but never back up into the top of the tree from whence he came.  Every little bit the wind would gust up again and he seemed to shiver even though the temperature was around 100F at that time in the late. He, I assumed it was a “he”, could not fly back to the nest and parents and something would get and eat him later on.  I knew the poor creature was doomed.  The pretty little grey bird would soon be dinner for something else like a hawk or a neighborhood cat.  Before the owl dropped down I had seen a hawk perch on a limb just to the left of my car.

I am not a big animal lover or pet owner at all, but something made me get out of the car and stoop down to take a closer look at the little grey owl.  I gazed down at him and he looked back up at me with big yellow eyes.   He made no sound at all in the ever blowing hot wind and I got back inside of my car preparing to leave him there. But I did not sit for long. I got back out and went back to him.  I reached down with my hand and petted him a little.  He did not squirm or try to flee.  Then in an impulse driven by feeling compassion and pity for the little bird I scooped him up.  I carefully got in the car and placed him in the passenger seat.  He simply sat there and did not move, maybe he was in shock, or tired, or scared.

I drove up the hill from the park and pulled into my driveway and took the little guy inside.  Thinking back to watching cable TV shows about nature and wild animals I tried to feed him.  I sat him up on the counter by the sink and finely chopped up some turkey with a little water.  He would not open his mouth and made no sound looking up at me with his big yellow eyes.  I got a bit sad and worried then.  I wanted him to eat something and be OK.  I really had no idea about how to really care for him or how I could keep him until he was big enough to be on his own.  Bringing him home was, again, some unexplainable impulse.  Here I was, a 51 year old man who really did not care for animals much at all with a baby owl of some type in my kitchen with no real plan for caring for a bird who otherwise would surely die.

Next I gathered my thoughts and did the only logical thing.  I called my daughter Jane who was in college majoring in marine biology and loves all animals.  Surely, she would know what to do with the owl in my kitchen.  I pulled out my cell phone and called her up.  True to form she did not answer so I Ieft her a detailed and perhaps desperate message to call me back.  I tried once more to feed the owl the turkey mush and got a piece in his mouth which he would not swallow.  He just looked at me again and made no sound in the quiet of the kitchen.

Then the phone ring and it was Jane.  She asked me how the owl was and started telling me to call the Fort Worth Zoo and the Texas Wildlife Department who might be able care for “Mr. Owl” and save him.  We talked some more and we hung u.  I then  called the two numbers. Of course it was after 5PM so one was home.  Great I thought as I picked up the phone to call Jane back while I looked at the still silent little owl.

Jane picked up and we talked some more.  My cell phone beeped with an incoming call, my mom of course who always calls it seems when I am in the middle of another call or in the bathroom.  Jane and her boyfriend were doing some web searches and got me a number of a local lady who apparently saved birds and other wildlife.  I thought that was great. Perhaps there was now a real solution to for saving Mr. Owl.  I called the lady hoping for the best. I spoke with her and she said she could not take the bird that night since she was sick and lived over 30 miles away.  Again I thought the owl was doomed but not so, the lady had a friend just a few miles from my house up in Keller whose number she gave me.   I next called him and he said would take Mr. Owl the next day at 9AM in the morning.  I hung up and I was very pleased.  I ate my dinner thinking ever more about the still silent little owl that I had made a bed for in a big shoebox based on Jane’s directions.  I hoped he would be fine once I got him to the man in Keller.

I went to bed late since I actually stayed up watching the line of storms to the north which belched out sheet lightning that reminded me of a scene from Saving Private Ryan.  In the movie the small group of soldiers put in for the night in the ruins of a church before continuing their search for the elusive and still unknown Ryan.  Flash after flash of artillery lit up the clouds in the dark sky, the rumbles of the guns were like the distant thunder rolling across the heavens over my neighborhood.   Quiet alternated with those growls in the evening as the sky lit up.  It was the soundtrack to scene that night to save the little owl.

I went back in the house and got ready for bed.  Before I turned out the lights I checked Mr. Owl once more. He was sitting in the shoebox still making no noise and not moving much.  I looked at him and he looked up at me.  I wondered what he was thinking as I closed the box’s lid before turning out the lights.

I woke up about 3AM to the sound of thunder, wind, and rain. It was a severe thunder storm for sure.  I got a bad feeling then.  It was not a feeling of fear about the storm, but a feeling of fear about Mr. Owl instead.  I turned on the light in my bathroom where I had placed Mr. Owl when I went to bed and opened up the box and looked down.  Mr. Owl was still.  He was dead and stiff in the little nest I had made for him with one of my T-shirts to keep him warm.  Sometime in the five hours between turning out the lights and the storm he had passed. Maybe he had some injury from falling from the tree, or died from shock, but regardless he was dead.

In the movie and its fantasy setting Private Ryan made it home.  But in my little part of reality Mr. Owl did not.  I felt good about trying to save the little bird, and Jane said that too of course, but I could not help questioning why I felt so sad and had shed a tear over him when I saw him dead. Maybe the fact that the baby bird was helpless tugged at my heart.  While I am anthropomorphizing he seemed to be saying “help me” with his gaze; I can still see his big yellow eyes looking up at me.

In the end I think this event shows us that in life we should try to save little things that cannot save themselves.   And we too, just like Mr. Owl, are not so big in the universe as we hope.  Hence one day we might need someone to save us if we should fall out of our own warm, comfortable nest or tree.

Your Rooms At My Homes

Now that Days Remembered is out there, I have returned to working on my next bok which will be about my kids.  It is tentatively called “Notes To My Kids: Little Stories About Grown Up Kids”.  Each note  will be a story from their childhoods, and maybe some from college too.  The notes will be like the ones in the first two books, a few pages each.  So to give you a feel for this book I will be posting sample notes as time goes by.  Here is one to start with.

After me and your mom split up I had my own place obviously. Whether it was an apartment or a house I always had bedrooms set up for you two. When you visited me I wanted you to have your own space and your own things there. Hopefully making those times with me seem more like you were still at home.

Over the years your rooms at my places had the usual stuff: a bed, a closet, and some other furniture like a little desk. Honestly I did not spend a lot on those furnishings but they seemed to work fine. You both had toys in the closet and a place to sit and do your homework. And of course you had your own TVs and later on a stereo each as well. When we weren’t doing something together you two would sit in your rooms, play with your stuff, and talk on the phone to your friends or your mom. All in all you had normal surrounding at my places where things were usually calm.

When you went home, you would straighten up your rooms and pack up your stuff, and off we would go back to Plano or The Colony to take you back to your Mom’s, your home away from your home with me. Yes as kids you had two homes you see.  Because I tried to make those places and times not feel like a vacation, and as much as I could like you were with me more, your rooms had a special place in my heart and still do. True, I had the rest of my houses to myself usually, but your rooms were still yours even if you were not in them most of the time, especially when you were in college and grown. And your rooms are still there even to this day. They are filled with your stuff still, Jane has more in hers, but those bedrooms remain yours not mine even though they are surrounded by the rest of the house which I alone now rule.

Even though I am the only one there most of the time your doors are open and your things remain there still. Still and quiet the rooms are now but in my mind I can clearly see and hear you in them. When I walk into them now I remember you sleeping in your beds or watching your TVs, reading a book, or eating a snack – all things you both always did. Those thoughts and images are the echoes of your childhoods that still fill those rooms and my heart every single day.

So what now for those two little rooms you might ask? Being single and you two grown there is no day-to-day need for them to be yours perhaps. But in reality they will remain yours as long as I am there. Maybe in not too many years hence you might be back in them more. Not by yourselves, but with a yet unknown spouse and maybe some kids of your own. And when that day comes your rooms and my house that once were filled with the sounds of your own youthful games and innocent childish fun will be that way again. That is the way your once and forever bedrooms at my house, also your home, should always be.

Sunsets And Contrails

One thing I love to do in the late fall and winter is watch the sunrises after the time changes on days when high cloud stream in from the west.  Their filaments and strands stretch across the sky from horizon to horizon in ever-changing groups of gentle shapes and sizes.  As the sun goes down the colors change from white to pink and purples then finally to grey disappearing into the dark sky and the glow of the city lights.  Those sites really relax me and also make me think of all types of things.  Other things like life and time and the course of one’s life.

One thing I see in those skies, as I did just the other day, are the contrails of high-flying jets cutting through the thin layers of those heavenly sheets far above.  They cut like arrows through the smooth cirrus arching above my head.  They are seen for a while then they fade away or simply disappear as the atmosphere changes.  But as they go, more come back as the transcontinental air traffic always surges from coast to coast leaving new trails through the sky. They are like the cliché “times arrow” in a way; they are a symbol of the passage of time and of the path our lives briefly take through eternity, and then fade away to make way for the lives of others.

At the point of each contrail is an airplane filled with people going to who knows where.  When I see a plane with its contrail behind it I wonder who is there sitting in those seats.  Are they tourists, consultants, college kids going home, or a grandparent going to see a child and a grandchild?  Then I remember that I too have sat many times on in those seats.  And sometimes I have wondered if someone on the ground, watching a sunset like me, has looked up to the wonders above and seen those same planes and asked himself who was up there looking down?   Surely many things we can see in nature are a reminder of our place in the world, and these streaks of condensation miles above our eyes are no different indeed.  We can look up into the skies, and other places, and be reminded of our own lives.

Finally there is the sheer beauty of these lines in the skies.  They catch my eye when they sometimes make symbols above my head.  Like one time there were two contrails making what looked like a Christian cross or when a group of contrails on another day looked like an unfilled-in tick-tack-toe grid scribbled as if by the hand of God in the sky.  And another simply random series of crisscrossing lines far above that looked interesting on its own, even though it was like nothing around us on the ground: an abstract picture painted above my head.  So above us is art, all artist who are jets flying miles above.

So when you see a contrail growing above you late in the afternoon pause for a bit and spend some time underneath its arc. In a little while there may be something wonderful on hand to view amidst the backdrop of the soft palette of a winter sunset on a cold, sunny winter day.

Days Remembered And Beyond

Now that Notes To Stephanie: Days Remembered is now up for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the question is of course what next?  Well the answer is simple, Notes About My Kids will be the focus of my writing.  It is about 20% done and based on the first two books it will be done next fall some time.

Of course I will keep marketing the first two books, that is not so easy of a task, and that too will be a focus for 2011.

Some of you might also be wondering if there will be more Notes To Stephanie books written.  The simple answer is no, there will be no more books about our time  together.  Sure there are more things I could write about, like many of the sentences in the last Note of Days Remembered called ‘Do You Remember?’, but I will not do that.   The story has been told, there is really nothing more to say.

Now after Notes ABout My Kids there is a fourth Notes book planned which will deal with my family and years growing up.  Right now that is simply a list of chapters/Notes.  It is  along way off from being done. But one day it will be.

And beyond that?  Well there is the cookbook, the project “mismanagement”  book, and maybe a  fifth Notes book whose exact theme I am still working on.  Maybe something like “Notes On People I Met On Business Trips” or simply a collection of miscellaneous Notes about whatever comes to my mind.  We will see how that unfolds.

I think that is enough to keep me busy for some time to come….. For now have a Merry Xmas and a Happy New Year.

Another Chapter Done

Right now Notes To Stephanie: Days Remembered is in final formatting.  Once done it will go up to LSI and appear on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Thus, it will be up for sale in October sometime and this project will be completed.

 Thinking back, this book took an entire year  to write and edit.  I think the time was well worth it and concludes telling the story of “Stephanie” and I.  Sure I could write some more Notes on her and I but I won’t since Days Remembered and its predecessor say it all I think.   So what will she think about this book?  Who knows, and her reaction if she has one, is not why I wrote it.  I wrote the book to tell a story.  Really more than one story about everyday people and how they went through life facing its ups and downs. That fact is something obvious yet it is something that when I thought about those events there was more to them than just the events themselves.  In life’s events, even though they are commonplace, one can see something greater than the event itself.  That side of things is reflected in the “life lesson” I tend to put at the end of each Note.  Little things make me think of larger ones you see. And that is the ultimate point of what I write about.  I tell stories that many of us have lived and then draw a lesson from them to share with others.  By sharing my experiences, which sometimes makes my emotions swell up in me when it is something painful, I hope others can learn from what I have seen and maybe put the events in their own lives in perspective. Hopefully then their journey through life’s sometimes rough roads might be easier.

 So what is my next project you might ask?  Book #3 will be “Notes AboutMy Kids”.  It will have the same format as the first two “Notes” books but will cover things about my children as  they grew up and became adults.  I have started writing on this and have about 15% of a draft done.  This one will take another year to do so I will write and edit and post Notes from it as I go down that road.  After that, book #4 will be Notes about my growing up years.  I have not written anything on it yet but I have a chapter outline.  It will have the same format as the other books as well. Together I am calling the books “The Notes Series”.

 And how about a book #5? I don’t know yet.  But I did have one idea in the Denver airport one day after  a lady started talking to me who had a better boarding group than me.  For some reason she offered to let me say I was with her, and thus board the plane earlier.  She did not have to do that but it was a kind gesture that I remembered.  On another day on the way home I sat next to a man at the bar who knew Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief who I have met.  He told me some stories about the Moncriefs who own some land near his home in central Colorado.  Strange to meet someone who knew Moncrief in an airport bar in Denver, eh? Based on those two days I thought I could write book about such things having done a lot of business travel over the years: “Notes About People At The Airport”.  You never know who you might meet or see in a busy airport.

 So in the end writing the Notes books is like life itself.  You go down the road of existence , maybe not knowing to where, but in the end you live life and maybe learn something from it, especially things that show us that there are greater things than just ourselves.

The Other Side Of The Mountain

Life does have ups and downs.  The hard times try us but in those dark moments sometimes a small light illuminates the path to better times.

Do you remember that film from the late 60s or early 70s called “The Other Side Of The Mountain”? A young boy goes and lives alone in the mountain wilderness endures hardship, learns about life, and then returns to his everyday life back home with his parents.  Right now I am on the other side of the mountain in a way like that movie character was.  Things are not what they once were.

After being out of work for a while I have started an out of town project near Boulder, Colorado.  The client is but a few miles from the edge of the Rocky Mountains, Colorado’s Front Range.  I can go outside in the parking lot and view the line of mountains running from north to south stretching from one end of the horizon to the next in an unbroken line.  The peaks and foothills tower above the farmland on the rolling prairie that spreads to its edge.

That image reminds me of this past year.  Life was just rolling along like the fields near the peaks and then WHAM, divorce and no job. The peaks had risen up and stopped the rolling plains of my life.  Where I thought I was going suddenly changed, and worse, I felt I was in limbo going nowhere.  Pressure and stress mounted as time went on; nothing seemed to be going well at all.  I knew I needed something else to occupy myself besides a frustrating search for a job. 

So one day, I looked around my office, found my books on how to publish a book, and resolved to finish the book I had worked on, the one you now see on Amazon and B&N.  While I looked for a job every single day I also now worked on my books, I started something I wanted to do and something people said I was good at.   Amidst the angst of my situation I resolved to work on this new effort, a new path down the road of life.   In that quest I did learn something about myself.  Just as the boy in the film learned how to live from the land, I learned to do something new that was important to me.  I knew I could do something I had not done before and that fact gave me new confidence in myself.  Now, I am a confident person anyway but when you are faced with major negative events in life having any success can make a huge difference in your outlook on things.  Such a triumph helps you reach your own other side of the mountain.  In failure or disappointment one small victory, which may only seem small at the time, can be a large factor in getting past a trying period in your life.

Having now reached a place over the top of the past year’s hard to scale peaks, life is returning to normal again.   My mood is better, my sense of humor and good nature are as they were before.  And I still work on my books.  So I have reached the other side of the mountain just like the boy did.  I have endured some trying times and life has been restored.  It is not the same as it was before but it is good nonetheless and new things to look forward to.

We should all try to find the other side of our own mountains of life and climb the rough peaks, endure the cold winds that blow through us, and learn how to live well again regardless of what we endure to get to a new, warm place in our life.

Colors Of the Rainbow

All of us have heard the old saying “it takes all kinds of people” right?  Here is one way of looking at that from my first book, “Notes To Stephanie” Middle Aged Love Letters And Life Stories”.

Colors of the rainbow. You have more than one time my dear compared our personalities to the colors of the rainbow. A visible spectrum of behavior if you will. You said you were, and saw, the whole spectrum of light. Thus you saw people and events with more shades of grey than I did. While I was the mostly the ends: black and white. But with a ray of red down the middle, thus explaining my usual tendency of having one way or the other views but also showing why I have an almost inexplicable off the wall side (like my weird sense of humor) that cropped up from time to time.

Our personalities are therefore alike but yet different still. We share some colors, but many we do not. There is much we have in common but there are still enough differences to create great interest in the other and sometimes great frustration as well. These differences, and common traits, also ferment great passion in our love life and create a sense of wonder about the other most days.

In nature, a rainbow appears after a storm. It is luminous and shiny after the dark and rainy event that gave birth to it. Likewise with each of us, events both dark and stormy, but also ones that are bright and full of life, have made us who we are individually, and in turn who we are together as a couple.

The colors of our relationship rainbow really do blend together to create a close and exciting marriage that is also full of contentment, safety, and predictability for both of us. That way, as life’s storms do rage around us, and the rainbows appear, we are consistent in our love for one another always.

Forgiveness

As I am now in the process of getting an editor to review “Days Remembered” I looked back on my first book, “Notes To Stephanie: Middle Aged Love Letters And Life Stories” at some my favorite or meaningful Notes there.  And here is one.  It covers a concept all of know to be right and true but sometimes find hard to practice.

Forgiveness. Yes forgiveness is a two-way street my darling. We must forgive each other but also ourselves. It is obvious that both of us sometimes have hurt the other through our fault driven actions. But also, we hurt ourselves by blaming ourselves for things that have happened to us or to our children. Now if we had done things deliberately to each other, or to our kids, or even to ourselves, to cause hurt then forgiveness would be a difficult thing to justify. But in our case, our mistakes were just that, mistakes. Not premeditated actions intent on hurting others.

Also, until time passes, just how does one know if something was a mistake sometimes? After the time a decision is made, the correctness of the path it dictated may later come into doubt by the appearance of new information or more wisdom. Things that one day seemed to be the logical may later become inexplicable.

Because it is impossible to exactly know if an action is really the correct thing to do, one has to forgive one’s self for things that are later found to be mistakes. If you don’t, you could judge your whole life to be a failure or a source of woe to yourself or to others.

Yes we will all fall short, as we both have, but in the end our hearts are true and our intentions good to ourselves and others. Since we are good people we have to be able to forgive each other and just as importantly ourselves. To do otherwise would mean forever suffering angst about what might have been done better instead of learning from our shortcomings and applying that hard-earned knowledge to improve our lives by making better choices. So we must always tell ourselves the past is both gone and our actions were OK and move on down the road of life with better directions for the journey that will unfold along its length. That way, we will make fewer wrong turns at its forks.

Forever

This note is from my original book, “Notes To Stephanie: Middle Aged Love Letters And Life Stories”.  It is one of the first notes I ever wrote to “Stephanie”.   I am going to post some of the notes from that book here from time to time.  Thus you can get another view of the overall story I am telling in the first book and the sequel “Days Remembered”.

Forever. Remember that Saturday night you told me with such love and emotion in your eyes you wanted to be with me forever? I still think of that, the picture of you so clear in my mind filling me with strong emotions still.

You said that when we die our being, our soul, our energy leaves our body and goes off into the universe. You said you hoped we would be together then, forever, somehow our energy finding each other. Who knows what happens when we die. Maybe you are right. I surely hope so. Knowing you now, the corporeal Stephanie that I love so much, how could I bear to not be with you forever? It really does hurt to think of not having you around one day.

That hurt of someday not having you with me is a sign of how much I love you, and is a feeling that I have never had before with anyone. Your wish of never being apart from me shows clearly how much you really love me. The look of hope, love, and longing in your big, beautiful eyes when you said that still shines in my mind’s eye just as bright as it did that evening in our den. Maybe it took all of our ups and downs over the years to know what real love is and how much it means to have it. And how much it would hurt to lose it.

Regardless of what eternity holds, I will always enjoy the time we have in this reality. So if one day we can be together in the “great beyond” I know we will be happy there too, just as we are happy now in this plane of existence.