this is the story of the boys who loved you
who love you now and loved you then
some were sweet and some were cold and snuffed you
and some just laid around in bed
some had crumbled you straight to your knees
did it cruel did it tenderly
some had crawled their way into your heart
to rend your ventricles apart
this is the story of the boys who loved you
"Red Right Ankle", The Decemberists
We all move together inexorably, away from the last year into the next, and as we do I sit upright and alone in a bed made for two, I sit alone and listen, over and over again, to this sad, sad song, and for company just a glass of red wine on the nightstand and a large plastic box filled to overflowing with hundreds of love letters written a decade and a half old ago, letters to and from myself and the woman who would be my wife for thirteen years, three months, and twenty seven days.
Yesterday I went through that box of letters, trying to organize them; over the years we had visited them only occasionally, both of us knowing them to be priceless treasures but convinced that they served as beautiful relics of our youth that neither of us would need to lean on for decades to come, both of us secure in the knowledge that we had decades of togetherness to look forward to before one of us would be left, in dotage, to sift through their contents for some small measure of comfort.
Through the years the forces of benign neglect and gravity and moves between houses and rooms within houses had caused the letters to collapse upon themselves; where once they sat in orderly fashion, in chronological order, mine and hers in separate piles, tied together with red and blue ribbons, they now melded into one chaotic mess; they had turned unruly.
But then, Lauren died in November, at the age of thirty eight, she died unexpectedly, as any thirty eight year old would; for even in this world of relentless cruely and meanness, one cannot honestly and reasonably live with the expectation that an otherwise healthy thirty eight year old wife and mother of three children, swaddled in the comforts of the American middle class, could die so young.
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So I went through that box of letters.
I had read some of them before I tried to organize them, over the past few days. Those words, read alone late at night as our children slept, brought her back to me in a way that no memory could. Even as they reminded me that I had lost, forever, her physical presence, that I had lost forever the chance to look at her and listen to her and touch her, that I had forever lost the chance to wake up in a morning to discover her still asleep in my arms, even with that, the power of her words, even all these years later, reminded me that through her, and her only, I had glimpsed the heavens, the mystical, the eternal.
Along with the words I stumbled across some pictures, some lying within the envelopes, and some within little photo-sized albums. In one letter tome, written only a few months into our affair, I came across a shot of her at age three and a half, close to the age of our daughter Evie, who turned three just nine days after Lauren died. My love, as a child, stood on top of an overturned canoe, near a river or stream, in the dead of summer, with green grass all around and a huge weeping willow behind her, and for all the world I swear she looked like Evie's twin.
&&&&
I found one mini-album and put it aside for tonight; I had looked at the first picture in there and knew that it contained photographs of Lauren during the last year or so of her time in college, or "at university" as she used to put it. A time just a year and a half before I met her, before she came to America.
So tonight when I sat down in bed, well before midnight, with my music and my wine, I opened the box of letters and dug out that album and paged through it. Pictures of her with her mom and dad out in Saudi, where her dad worked for many years; pictures of them back home in the North-West of England, and then pictures of her at Keele, pictures of her with friends who loved her then and love her still, friends I recognized.
Then came a picture of her with a woman friend I didn't recognize, not that I cared, for in that picture Lauren looked simply stunning, her right hand resting under her chin and a big grin on her face and her eyes twinkilng. I stared at that picture for a long time, and although someone had taken the picture sixteen years ago, before I had even met her, her eyes shined so vividly I thought she might at any second slowly open the French doors to this bedroom and walk in to embrace me.
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I finally turned the page of the album to see what vision of her might greet my grieving eyes next, and when I did I couldn't believe it: a picture of her sat in a bar, with him. He had his arm around her. Her lips were pursed but you could see she had a smile on her face; he looked like the old cat that had devoured the canary in one bite.
During the last few weeks of her last semester as a graduate student here in the U.S. we talked every day on the phone and we began to open up to each other, and one afternoon, out of nowhere, she began telling me all about him.
She had met him during her last year of university. He wasn't a student, he worked all week, maybe in London, some of the details have faded from my memory, and anyway, he came up to the town where her school was, for some reason I can't remember, and they met, and she fell for him, and he started coming up every weekend to see her.
She had told me, in those final weeks of her studies here, when we both harbored secret affections for each other that we both denied until the last possible moment, of how it had ended badly between them; after some time, again, I can't remember how long, it might have been weeks or it might have been months, he confessed to her that he had another girlfriend back home, and that he loved them both, and he didn't know what to do about it. And she told me that of all the boys she'd known in her days, none had hurt her like he had.
&&&&
A couple of years later, just three months before we were to be married, me and Lauren walked through Washington Park in Albany. It was April and the spring was gorgeous, we hadn't seen each other for three months and we'd had a long and cold and snowy winter and all was well with the world, and out of nowhere she mentioned that they had spoken on the phone.
In the more than fifteen years me and Lauren spent in love, the moment
she told me about this particular call was the only moment I felt any anger or jealousy or resentment about the life she led before we fell for each other.
Not even six weeks after she had finished her studies here, in a letter dated February 9th, 1993, she wrote that he had called her asking for a reunion; she wrote to me that she wanted me to know, she wanted me to know that she trusted me enough to tell her anything at all, even if it might make me unhappy to hear about. And she told me that she had told him, thanks but no thanks, I've got no use for you anymore.
I felt happy that she had told me about it but I also had thought that I had heard the last of him, so that day in the park, I felt my defenses rearing up as she mentioned that they had spoken.
Why? I asked.
She went on; he had mentioned to her that his girlfriend, the one back home back then, the one who had, according to him, never known about Lauren, had given birth to their daughter, and that he had convinced her to name the girl Lauren.
I'm not proud of it now, but then, over our years together I have but a handful of regrets; I complained about her conversation with him, complained bitterly, asked why over and over again, until she cried, until she asked, how could you ever, ever doubt everything I've said, how could you ever doubt everything I've told you I feel about you?
&&&&
And tonight, as I listen to this damn song and try to ignore the fact that I will pass into this new year alone for the first time since the calendar turned to January 1st, 1992, as the words quoted above pass through the headphones while I look at that picture of her with him, I feel tears running down my cheek, as I think about the heartache my love endured at his callous hands years ago, before I even knew her, and I feel tears running down my cheek over making her cry that day in the park.
And I wonder what became of that girl, the one who will never know she was named after the woman I married; she must be a teenager now, I think. Did her father mend his ways, did her parents make it through together, did they give her what she needs?
Yet another question I will never know the answer to.
&&&&
There are some things I do know, though. I know that Lauren knew, until the day she died, that she had found true love with me; I know that she knew that I loved her madly, and I know that she loved me the same.
And one more thing I know. In one of those letters in that box, she wrote that she loved me so much it scared her, because she didn't know how she could cope without me.
So I can't but think: my dear, perhaps my final gift to you, given unexpectedly, and against my will, and far sooner than we ever could have dreamed, but given to you nonetheless, the gift of letting you go first, sparing you the pain of the heartache you feared the most.