LOVE NEVER FAILETH

In September of 1967 when I was a very young woman with a little baby boy, I met a guy and fell in love.

We rode around Hollywood and up Topanga to the Inn of the 7th Ray and lots of places - on a Midnight Blue-pearl Harley panhead chopper, painted by the one and only Von Dutch himself. We were so reckless. I struggled with knowing I had to change things, a mom cannot be careless with her own life and with her child's future.

We had our jobs, we had four or so various places we lived, we hitchhiked up the coast, we had our horses -- my Gala from my childhood, his Appaloosa, Dolly. We lived and loved and fought and cried and then life just tore us right apart.

On the last day with him, as I drove away I felt a tingling sensation pulling out of my forehead, like something was physically being removed from me. It was some time before I came to know that the sensation was caused by seperating two people who are linked in ways beyond simple human understanding.

For forty years I have felt like a she-wolf howling across a frozen lake for her lost mate. Not a day goes by when I have not thought of him. Not one relationship or romance I have not compared to ours; Not one man's sex appeal I did not measure by how much I still wanted him. I reached out once. To let him know I had not forgotten. There was nothing back. I decided, I love someone who now feels nothing, I really should let this go. But I didn't.

I did still ride a chopper or two with other people, a few times. Big bikes are like a fever that has no cure. But I was restless, unsatisfied, it felt all wrong. It was too painful. Bikes without him? Such emptiness.
Follow along through the years. Two marraiges, but neither my mate. Two wonderful offspring, beautiful grandchildren too. I still look like me, pretty much. But how did I get to be this age?
I prayed, meditated, for answers at night. Why did I have to be alone? I hoped for some answer besides the one I always suspected. I was alone because I only wanted him, and alone was better than that peculiar loneliness of being with the wrong person, someone who does not even understand who you are. That is the worst loneliness of all.
Sometimes I would hear his voice in my head. A certain resonance to it, unlike any other voice in the world. I would remember his laugh, and my face would burn with how it made me feel. How could I be filled with so much emotion for someone, and not have them feel waves of it hitting them....even if they didn't know where it came from. Love like a drumbeat inside me, the heat.... so sweet.
I used to go to Orphans of the Wild, Gordon Meredith's place. I went for the wolves--- it was always about the wolves. My first experience with unconditional love was from a wolf. You don't forget that. Her name was Tammy, and she was a little silver-white slip of a thing -- my angel without wings. And there was one, a huge black male, named Shadow. He was tame enough to have lost his fear of humans, and so, the natural fear of men the wild ones have, in his case, had changed to lethal aggression. He would attack a man, anyone but Gordy, intending serious harm or even to kill. But not women.
He would fix his golden eyes on me, affectionately, and he would walk towards me slowly, like every step mattered. He actually moved more like a big cat, when he did that. Every time I went there and I visited with Shadow and watched him walk towards me, just that way, I thought of my beloved. One day when I was leaving, I climbed in my ancient VW bus, Ely, and got ready to roll down a hill and pop the clutch to start the old boy. But, rising from bass through alto to soprano, was a harmony of mourning. Swelling up from the wolves, beseeching me: Don't go. I laid my head on the steering wheel and I cried. I cried because in my whole life I don't know that I had ever felt such an honor bestowed upon me. It was my moment of worthiness. Don't go, don't go, baby please don't go..... a song from my time with him, began to run through my mind.

Last month after trying for 20 years to remember the last name of someone, it suddenly came to me, like getting hit in the head with a brick. I sat bolt upright, saying it outloud. I hurried to the computer and started looking for her. Within forty five minutes I had found contact information and I wrote. I asked if she was the Mimi who had a sister Jan... Mom, Lorraine.... and I said she might remember me with a different name, and my white horse I had. She wrote back, very soon. It was so exciting, I really had wanted to know how her life had gone, was she ok...all those things. And oh yes she did remember me. It was wonderful to talk to her. Even though she is a relative of my lost love, I wanted only to know how she was, because I had cared about her. And now she wanted to call me her unofficial 'Auntie', and that was fine with me.
I would make no attempt to reconnect with him. As far as I could tell, his past stayed well back where it started, he had moved on.

I have been using Facebook more. I check in. I click on my messages, dawdle a little, then leave. I did it that day, and in my messages, was one that started out, "I can't believe it", and it was from him.
Things have moved very quickly, how could they not, when I have heard him say he looked for me but had my new name spelled wrong and my high school wrong, and had never found me, that he wrote me a thank you note for what I had sent him once, but what happened to it? I never got it... and that every single day for forty years he had thought of me and still loved me as he has loved no one else.

First I had to get past the unfairness of why so much time had to pass with us both lonely for each other. How could this be? It made no sense to me. Then the sensation of living in a dream set in.... no this could not be reality.... I am the only person in the world who could carry a torch for 40 years. Aren't I? But no, it is not a dream. I will tell you what I think. God heard my prayers, and tasted the salt of my tears. I believe the universe, made by God, rewards the pure of heart. Once, a long time ago, maybe 1977, I had a vision after meditating. I was walking across a grassy high plateau, with Jesus. I know that it was Him, it was like seeing someone I knew. I could even smell the light, incense-like scent of his garments, earthy and pleasant. We communicated mind to mind; We didn't speak outloud. I had been asking to understand the "why" of something, and he came to answer me. As He showed me symbolically, while placing some stones, what the missing piece was that kept things from falling into place -- I heard the words, "This, then...is what we will do". The impact of the "we" was not lost on me. Off in the distance, was a city with exquisite golden domes. I never have forgotten the lesson learned in that experience. And now, as I have prayed and meditated again for answers, I have received reassurance.

A good man and a good woman want to be together, belong together, and God has placed them where they could create a future. Maybe people don't acknowledge that anyone in the last third of their life should be concerned about creating a future, but that is erroneous thinking. There is always a future. Now, and even later at the portal of life's end, when it becomes purely a spiritual matter. I hope to live it with someone I have adored most of my life, to be able to show him every day how cherished he is. I have waited so long. I am grateful for what has brought him back. The other half of my heart has been returned to me. But I have to wait a little while longer now. The big wheel spins, life always has it's details and struggles. I pray for his discernment in recognizing the motives behind the words of others, for his confidence, his certainty, his courage and perception. I have seen all these qualities in him. Truly he is one of the rarest people I have ever known. He dazzles me and delights me and makes my heart sing.

And so I have one more thing I pray -- that soon he will be able to walk to me, take me in his arms, and stay.