Sad
Love Stories That Will Make You Cry
Promise Part 2
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The memorial service would be at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
He flew to Ohio on Monday arriving late at night
and taking a taxi to a motel not far from where
the memorial service would be. On Tuesday morning
he took a taxi to a small church. He arrived fifteen
minutes before the service was to begin and introduced
himself to a woman setting out framed photos on
a table at the front of the church. The woman was
her cousin. He looked at the photos. There she was
from little girl to grown woman. In one she looked
to be about
ten years old and she was sitting on a bicycle.
He remembered her voice telling him of the car accident
she had been in when she was thirteen years old
and how she had become a three legged person referring
to her cane. He looked at a photo of her as he had
known her. He stared closely at the photo and could
see the cross that she was wearing. It was the cross
that she had taken off of her neck and put around
his. Tears began to trickle down his cheeks as he
sat down. He was close to the front of the church.
He glanced at her cousin sitting in the row of seats
to his right. He shot a quick glance behind him.
There were only two other people besides him and
her cousin. The minister said some kind words and
quoted scripture. It was clear by what was said
that the minister did not know her. The service
lasted fifteen minutes.
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He walked towards the doors of the church. The
two people who had been sitting behind him introduced
themselves as co-workers from the restaurant where
she had worked. They shook his hand and walked down
the church steps. He looked at her cousin, “Do
you have time to talk?” She forced a smile
through teary eyes and they went for coffee. It
was between breakfast and lunch and there were few
people in the diner. They sat down at a corner booth.
He wanted to ask questions about the things that
he had wondered about. Maybe this would bring some
answers, some closure, or at least something close
to it. He didn’t know where to start. Sitting
with this stranger had added another wonder. What
did she know of him?
He began by asking a question that he had wondered
about at the church, right after the two co-workers
had introduced themselves. Before that he had thought
that the man might be her boyfriend and the baby’s
father. “Who’s the father of the baby?”
She was silent for a moment, looked down at her
coffee, sipped at it, then said, “I don’t
know and neither does anyone else. She’s in
foster care now and will be put up for adoption.”
He didn’t know what to say. His face dropped,
“What? How can nobody know who the father
is?” Her eyes darted back down towards her
coffee. “She slept around a lot.”
There had been too much wondering. He did not want
to leave with more questions. He did not want to
have another un-finished conversation. He drank
deep of what she told him. In her grief she shared
in a way that she might not have otherwise. He listened.
In a flash of realization he understood that while
he had loved her he had not fully known her. He
had only known a part of her.
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She had never known her father. Her mother was
a heroin addict who had become a prostitute to support
her habit. One time her mother had ran off with
a customer. Her pimp was angry and he waited for
her at her apartment. After two days had gone by
he became so enraged that he locked her daughter
up in a bedroom, bound her hands behind her back
and repeatedly raped her.
She was only thirteen years old. When he left the
bedroom she escaped by crashing through a third
floor window. That was how her leg had been injured.
There had been nerve damage. When she left the hospital
she went to live with her grandmother who was the
only adult who had ever treated her decent. She
fell in with a bad crowd when she was sixteen years
old. Her self-esteem was low and she would do just
about anything for some attention. By the time she
was eighteen she was addicted to snorting coke and
was selling her body on the street. She had gone
to Connecticut to escape from her pimp and to get
off of coke. The trip had been arranged by a young
street preacher whose life had been threatened for
helping street girls by helping them to relocate
and setting them up with a job and a place to stay.
Her cousin wiped at the tears streaming down her
cheeks. “I’m the one who got him to
talk to her. I had him come to my place when I knew
that she would be there.” She looked at the
cross hanging around his neck. “He gave that
to her and told her that the cross was not a symbol
of suffering but a symbol of love overcoming suffering.”
Her grandmother had been sick. Three weeks after
she had returned to Ohio her grandmother died. She
fell back in with some people that she had known
before and while she stayed away from hooking she
had gotten back into coke. She ended up bouncing
from man to man, anew one every month or two. “Most
just used her, some were abusive, all of them had
coke.” Somewhere during the conversation he
had started to cry. He whispered, “I loved
her.” Her cousin looked into his eyes and
said, “I
know. She thought that you were too good for her.”
He wiped at his tears with a napkin, “How
do you know that?” She reached across the
table and touched his hand. “Because she told
me. She was worried that she would hurt you if you
found out about her past. She felt guilty for lying
to you.” There is a communion when strangers
share tears with each other and he knew that she
meant what she had said. “I wanted to ask
her to marry me.”
She clasped at his hand and whispered, “She
always spoke well of you.”
Less than two weeks later he sat on the bench on
Valentine’s Day. Three years had passed since
the last time he had seen her. On this day he replayed
in his head what had occurred on that first Valentine’s
Day. He could hear the words that they had spoken
to each other, words etched upon his soul. His life
had been touched by her and he had felt in ways
that he had never felt before. The whole thing had
been an opening. He could feel more now. He was
grateful for the experience. He had come to know
himself
more. What he decided that fourth Valentine’s
Day on the bench was life changing. But that was
long ago.
Now it was eighteen years since that first Valentine’s
Day. He sat on the bench and placed the cross around
his neck between his thumb and index finger. He
said a silent prayer to the Spirit that moves within
each of us but is not felt by everyone. It was through
this Spirit that he still felt her. There had been
others before and after her. There had even been
a marriage that had ended two years before. It had
only lasted three years. He reflected on that and
how it started as a mutual convenience for two people
who didn’t have much in common other than
approaching middle age, being single, and not wanting
to be. It thought it fortunate that they had not
had children together. He had dated over the years
but most of the woman had seemed fearful of emotional
intimacy or perhaps he just felt too deep. It was
different with her. He had only been with her for
nine months but he had felt closer to her than any
of the others. He had never promised anyone what
he had promised her.
That first year they had walked to the park but
now he lived an hour dive away. It was 3 p.m. and
traffic was very light. As he drove home he thought
of the joy that had come from the promise that grew
out of his love for her. He went into the house
and walked into the kitchen. His fifteen year old
daughter was sitting at the table sipping tea and
looking at a magazine. He opened the refrigerator,
took out a bottle of water, and sat down across
from her. “Are you okay daddy?” He grinned
and said, “I’m fine.” She looked
directly at him. “You look like you’ve
been crying.” He was silent for a moment.
“I was thinking about your mother.”
She knew that Valentine’s Day was special
to him but she didn’t fully know why. “You
must have really loved her. I love you daddy.”
He looked across the table, smiled and said, “I
love you too Promise.”
By Brian Joseph
Brian Joseph is the author of the mystical, musical,
novel, The Gift of Gabe. http://www.giftofgabe.com/
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