Unforgettable                     

                                                      

Ten years ago.

Ten years ago today.

I was standing my post at the library front desk, one eye on the clock because my feet hurt and my back was so tired.  At 2:30 I snatched up my purse, calling goodbyes to Nancy, Julie and Pat, and headed for the car.  At home I called Mama to let her know I was there and hastily grabbed a Coke and a cigarette, putting my feet up as I settled back into my recliner. My usual routine, in other words.              

When the phone rang I almost didn't answer, figuring my extended warranty had a problem. But I did and the voice on the other end gave me instant pause. Hard as it may be to believe, I recognized the voice though it had been thirty-eight years since I last heard it.

It was the voice of Gene Reed. It was the voice of the past.

Gene Reed and I met at ages seven and eight, when we performed at our first piano recital for Mrs. Ella Hembree. We were in the same grade at school but not in the same classes til junior high. We sat beside each other in homeroom and math in the eighth grade, the year we also paired off at a couple of parties. At Jordan Jacobs' birthday party, we stood under the lamp post at the corner of Lora and Scott Streets yakking forever about whatever came to mind. We stood out on the ninth green one night at the country club, talking, what else?  Books. We both dearly loved books. We were the quintessential nerds, hurrying from class to class with a library book tucked under our arms.

In all the years since I had seldom passed that street corner or the country club without thinking of Gene.

To say we had a lot in common was an understatement. He remains the only human I never had to explain anything I said to. 

But when school resumed in the fall of 1967 he was gone. I saw him a couple of times when he came back to town for brief visits. Then in 1974 we shared my last English class at UAH, where he was also majoring in English with an eye toward teaching. I was engaged and he was newly married. After the last class I never heard from him again.

Until ten years ago today.

We laughed and talked for an hour. The next week he came to see me and we talked for six more hours. He came back again and again, until one night he asked me to marry him. He sang what would become our song, Unforgettable.  I dithered feverishly for a second, then said yes.

Because, you see, for the first time in my life, I wasn't looking for anything anymore.

Six months later we were married on Caldwell playground. He, of course, sang Unforgettable.

Yes, he was my soulmate, We shared more common interests than I would have thought possible when we were young. Books, movies, classic television, art, architecture, politics, history, religion, there were too many to number and we never ran out of anything to talk about.

Life became a joy again and I smiled wherever I went. We went places and renewed old friendships and all the days were diamonds. It was so perfect I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When I was diagnosed with autonomic neuropathy I was in despair. But he was upbeat, refusing to let me give up. He actually delighted in being my caregiver. 

But it was just not to be.

Eight years and ten days after he moved back to his childhood home town, he suffered a vicious intraparenchymal hemorrhage, a fancy way of saying a bad stroke.

And just like that the lovely dream turned to ashes.

He has been gone now for seventeen months, twenty-one since the day the ambulance took him away. Sometimes it seems those perfect years were a dream, that they weren't real.

But I know they were real, because I finally knew why it never worked with anyone else. I was waiting for him. 

Because Gene Reed was unforgettable. And that's what it says on our tombstones. Mine says "Unforgettable" and his says "Unforgettable too".

Just like our song.