"...don't be sad,
i know you will
but don't give up until
true love will find you in the end
this is a promise with a catch
only if you're looking can it find you
'cause true love is searching, too
but how can it recognize you
unless you step out into the light, the light..."
Daniel Johnston, "True Love Will Find You In The End"
Listen To This Song Here
True love indeed found me, looking or not, a bit over fifteen years ago, and then, on November 20, 2007, it left me behind forever, on that awful day when two surgeons sat across from me and told me that we had reached the end of the road: they could do no more to save her, leaving me with nothing more to do but to sit by the bedside of my true love, to sit with her and hold her hand as she laid on her deathbed, with nothing more to do but to desperately utter words of eternal devotion that I can only hope she in some way heard as she passed from this world.
Tonight, I sat on a couch with our nine year old son, helping him study for an upcoming test. He chafed and balked under the weight of the effort, and I could feel my resolve weakening, but I carried on with it, until, appropos of nothing, he blurted out some difficult questions.
"Dad?"
"What?"
"You and mom were true love, right?"
I wonder to myself, where is this coming from? But he heard me playing this song over the weekend, and perhaps he saw the faraway look in his father's eyes as I let the ache and longing of the singer's voice wash over me, as I let the voice and the words represent in their own way, for a moment or two, what I have lost, and I think, in some little boy way, somewhere in the midst of hearing these simple chords and simple words, he sensed my sadness, he saw how low the absence of his mother had laid his father.
"Yes. We were."
"Will I have true love someday?"
Initially I thought, I can't guarantee it, my son. But I realized that at his age, I could not expect him to glean deep understanding of the nuance, of the mystery and elusiveness of that thing we call true love. Can we glean that understanding at any age?
But even at his tender age he knows he saw something between his mother and father, and he knows that what he saw is something worth wanting for himself, some day.
"Yeah, you will."
"But how do you know?"
"Well, I just believe that you will. You're a great kid and I think you'll grow up to be the kind of person who has true love."
"No...I mean, how do you know? How do you know it's true love? Like how did you know you and mom was true love?"
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Three weeks ago, I got sick, and so did almost everyone around me. My nine year old did not get sick, and for a few days he got passed around amongst family and friends to make things easier on me. But of course, things were not easy. I had a horrible sinus infection, our eighteen month old boy had a double ear infection, and our three girl had a bad cold that left her miserable and cranky.
I didn't want to infect anyone else, I figured I needed at least some of my support system to stay healthy, so I isolated myself in my dumpy abode for several days, and somewhere in those days my soul descended to the most awful place of despair and hopelessness.
I'd lay on the couch, coughing and wheezing, while the two little ones limped around, I'd watch them try to play and I'd stare at the cracked living room ceiling and the dingy paint, and I'd look out the windows at the dismal late winter landscape of my dirty old hometown, and somewhere in there, in those days, I sunk lower than ever.
As much as I have ached for Lauren, yearned for her, as much as I have felt abject sorrow over her passing, as much as I have thought that I would gladly sell the entire world and its future into eternal misery in exchange for ten more minutes in her arms, through all the downs and even more downs of the past few months, some piece of my mind held tight to the thought that someday, life would not be so horrible: even if my heart could not believe it, my mind thought that someday, I would want to live again.
But during those days alone, with the minutes passing by like hours and the hours like days and the days like years, I lost that hope: I lost all hope.
&&&&
How do you know? How did I know?
I try to answer my son's question.
I know, because I have recently emerged, through nothing more, as far as I can tell, than force of will, from that place of total hopelessness, that I must resist the temptation to tell him to forsake the idea of, the hope of, true love.
For since my world has imploded I have sometimes thought that perhaps it would be better for my children to grow up with a disbelief in true love. I invested too much of myself in that ridiculous idea, I think, and look where it got me; alone, crushed beyond the powers of my description, at just forty one years old. I have thought, at times, that they would be better served to look elsewhere for salvation, for fulfillment.
But as hellish as things are now, I also know that meeting their mother and loving her, and receiving her love, was the best thing that ever happened in my seemingly forsaken life, and that if not for our true love they would not walk here among the living, and even if the suffering inherent in this life means we all might have been better off having never been born, there's no going back now. I am here. And so are they.
&&&&
How did I know? And how can I explain it to our nine year old boy?
I think of a long ago night, four thirty in the morning, and I can see myself in her bathroom, staring at myself in a mirror. She waited for me out in her living room. In thirty six hours she'd board a plane for her homeland, leaving this country behind for good, or so we thought. I looked at myself in that mirror, and by then I knew what she felt for me, and I suspected what I felt for her, but I looked at myself in that mirror and said to myself, you go out there and say goodbye and good night and good luck, because anything beyond that is complicated and difficult and makes no sense whatsoever. And I went out there and said goodbye and then I looked in to her eyes and when I did I threw logic and caution to the wind and did what come naturally to my wide open heart: I closed my eyes and kissed her.
And here we are.
And I can't explain any of that to my son, not now, and maybe not ever, so I answer his question the best way I can think of.
"Bailey, I can't really explain it, and everybody's different, but all I can tell ya is that you'll know it when it's there."
&&&&
I had faith on that night way back when. My faith won out against reason. And I need faith now, when reason sees nothing but darkness in my world. I need faith now, for myself and for my children. I need to believe. I need to believe that the three of them will live to see the magic of a moment when you just can't help yourself, I need to believe that in spite of this crippling blow we will all emerge to a place where we have the strength and courage and wildness to lay our hearts open to the joys of life.
I need to believe, because tonight my son asked me, "how will we ever be happy again, dad, how will we ever be happy without mom?"
"We will. We will. I don't know how but we will," I answered.
I don't know if he believed me tonight. If not, perhaps someday he will, because tonight I choose to believe, I believe we will get there, we will make it, and true love will find you in the end, my son, I swear it's true.