As we live in the last hour of 2024, I want to wish all of you a Happy New Year.
All of us have come a long way. We have faced the dragon and spit in his face. We are no longer captives.
I sometimes wonder how the hell I made it to my soon to be 78th birthday.
Since I woke up and left over 24 years ago, I downed enough alcohol that my liver should be rock hard. But thankfully, I no longer do this shit. I am perfectly happy drinking my herbal and exotic full leaf tea these days. And with good organic coffee thrown in every morning.
Right now, I'm listening to old R&B music from my younger days in the 1960's. Love ballads and such! My mind goes back to my life before JW takeover. I think of my first love and how I would have died for her. Then I got drafted and before I knew it, I got the Dear John letter. Two years later, I was done with the Army and started listening to my mother who became a JW in 1961. Started studying and met the next love of my life who became my wife. I was happier than I could ever imagine.
26 years later, my wife died of ovarian cancer. For the first time in my life, I was alone. Oh yes, I still had my mother and father and my daughter.
Jumping to today...28 years since my wife died, I live with my daughter. I feel truly blessed that she wants this old codger around. I'm also happy and blessed to have relatively good health.
But you know what is really strange? For decades, I haven't been able to shed the image and memory of my first love. The girl who wrote the Dear John letter when I was in basic training. It was 1983 that somehow, she got in touch with me, and we had so much to talk about, and what happened to our relationship. We met on the sly. I was totally screwed up. I wanted to go back in time to when we were in love. I was messing up my marriage too. Thankfully, we didn't go all the way.
Why am I admitting to all of this? I don't know how much sand I still have in my hourglass, and I cherish my memories, good and bad. I also wonder if any of you other old codgers and ladies, have old memories and people you had in your life keep invading your daily thoughts. My mind keeps going back to those days of my youth. I can't tell you how many times I dream of that first love, and others from my young days. Doing an internet search, I have addresses of many people I knew in those young days. Would I be wrong to write to them (my first love who isn't married) and others, or should I just put it in the "Closed" file?
I'm still a HappyDad. But I wonder about things that might have been.
