This weird thing has happened more than enough times for me to feel a chill when it does happen.
Yesterday, Grandgirl and I were discussing being in love when she asked me about my great loves and we started chatting about it. You know, why was I attracted, what happened, where are they now kind of thing.
I mentioned there was another fiancé, back in the day, before I got engaged to her grandfather.
And we talked about him for a while. He was an extraordinarily good-looking young man and one of my stellar memories is of him dancing me to the middle of the London Rivoli Ballroom and going down on one knee and proposing to me. He had his dark side too, though. I've often said in hindsight if I had married him it would have lasted a year, maybe two. There was a wild unsettled streak in him. He had sailed around the world a few times with the merchant navy and knew of things he wouldn't share with me. A wild unsettled streak in me too, I hasten to add, which was not completely visible then and he had unfortunately pedestalized me as a madonna. Not a healthy thing.
Grandgirl and I moved on to other matters and then today, I get my daily email from my long time friend in Dublin in which she tells me that JG had died and was buried, well, yesterday. He'd spent the last six months in a hospice in Cork.
Goosebumps? Yeah, for each of us.
And a yearning nostalgia in me tonight. For what, I couldn't tell you.
Enjoying your prolific-ness since your return. Take care.
ReplyDeleteQuite the co-ink-ee-dink, eh?
ReplyDelete"Yearning nostalgia."
I get something similar when I see Javier Bardem as a lover in movies. There go my knees.
Not that I've been with JB but I've been in such arms!
nostalgia’s like that, a yearning for no known place or time.
ReplyDeleteWhat a touching piece. And how spooky. I think any feeling of 'unfinished business' can give rise to pangs of yearning though. Even when the logical side of us know it would never have worked and our gorgeous never-was was actually a can of worms or at least nothing like we romanticised him to be underneath.
ReplyDeleteI gots the goosebumps from the telling of that as well.
ReplyDeleteCheri
To have an unforgettable love like that is a very special thing. It seems you have a little bit of heartache about him still, or at least about what you wished might have been. I think we all have someone significant like that in our past. Those who follow can never quite surpass them.
ReplyDeleteI feel that for the great loves in my past. For me, there is a yearning for what might have been if only it had been workable.
ReplyDeleteVeep:
ReplyDeleteThanks, as always, for your contribution to my ramblings. :)
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SJG:
ReplyDeleteOMG, JB does exactly the same thing to me. Don't know why. He is magnetic.
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Friko:
ReplyDeleteYes. It wasn't for him but for some time, maybe that never was.
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Laura:
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean. I think I was nostalgic for the girl I was then, perhaps.
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Cassie:
ReplyDeleteExtraordinary how the universe can nudge us sometimes.
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Irene:
ReplyDeleteOur young selves and the trust and faith and belief in magic perhaps. Not much to do with the 'other' involved, I believe.
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SAW:
ReplyDeleteLike a candle flaring briefly to show us the possibility of greatness. Who knows?
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:) smiling and understanding always as I read your sharing..
ReplyDeleteOWJ
ReplyDeleteYes, I knew you would. :)
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