A very respected friend posts a most powerful rendition about some earlier mistakes... memories... and deep personal reflections.

Worthy of a full read... and solemn contemplation.

Tim at Brutally Honest

30 Years Gone…Holding On.

Guest posted by tim aka The Godless Heathen.

It was early 1979, my girlfriend, Mary, and three or four of her girlfriends were to skip a few classes and then come back to school. There would be no parent's permission slips or hall passes, no one was to know except those involved. Incredibly, to my knowledge the secret stayed just that as I never heard a peep otherwise. Still till this day I’ve never told anyone.

While the others tagged along for support it was Mary and another girl who were the unfortunate ones who needed to go. They had made the gut wrenching decision that a girl of 16 years old should not have to make.

I went about my routine as usual, the magnitude of the situation and of what Mary was going through barely registering in my adolescent, self centered, jock/stoner mind.

I caught up to her later that day. Her normal bubbly personality of the cheerleader she was and the big, always present smile were gone, replaced by obvious sadness and watery eyes which soon turned to tears, streaming down her beautiful, quintessentially Irish face.

We made our way to a corner of the noisy lunchroom, away from everyone else and alone, in more ways than one, her much more so than me. She began telling me the excruciating details of what she had been through. In the infinite wisdom of a boy, I told her to stop, I didn’t want to hear it anymore. She, the strong, spitfire quickly shot back “No! You’re gonn’a listen and you gonn’a hear it all!” She was right, I knew she was right and I listened whether I wanted to or not.

The story was told, the tears flowed, we hugged, kissed and vowed our love for each other. Our problem was over, everything seemingly better and we went back to our day of high school. She obviously had much more to deal with emotionally and physically than me.

As I recall we never talked about it much, if at all, ever again. We stayed together for another six months or so but still got together spontaneously a handful of times after that as if we didn’t know how to stay away from each other. She even showed up a couple years later to send me off when I was about to go live a couple thousand miles away. Her boyfriend’s car horn in front of my parent’s house interrupting our long kiss goodbye.

I would see Mary briefly again a few years later when I came back to town for a week just after getting out of the Marine Corps, running into her on St. Patty’s day in an absolutely packed Irish bar. While I don’t believe in fate, I opened the bar door and she was standing right in front of me with her big, light up the room smile, kissing me on the cheek, telling me I looked great and that she was so glad to see me. We had lunch the next day, spent the afternoon together catching up. She was about to become a state trooper, all 5’3 of sweetness and kick ass. She called me the next day to invite me to a little family get together but I didn’t want to impose. I regret not going. Not the only thing I regret in that relationship.

He (in my mind's eye is never a girl for some strange reason) would be around 30 yrs. old now, handsome and athletic like his father and smart as hell like his mother.

Gone, not forgotten.

Thank you Tim... thank you.

chuck