I want you here, all of the time

Christmas 2003. Bill and I were excited for the day, but it turned out to be such a disappointment for him. He had wanted to spend the day with his "family." His girls. I was starting to see how self centered they were and how it broke his heart that they were.  I later discovered Bill didn't  have the money to buy extravagant gifts that year, but he made sure we all had a nice Christmas. It was important to him.

He had invited the girls over for dinner, but they were "too busy," but  not that busy that they couldn't come to get their gifts. The oldest was dating a boy that Bill did not care for. He apparently had done things and said things that Bill found to be disrespectful to his family and his daughter.  I met him a couple of times, but after the damage had been done. He was quiet but perhaps because he had burned bridges that were unrepairable with Bill.

Bill made homemade noodles for Christmas and I baked a ham. I brought my Christmas dishes over and together we set a beautiful table and made a wonderful dinner. I had thought the girls were going to be around for a while and so I had planned things that we could do to make the holiday memorable.  I had bought a puzzle for all of us to put together, but Bill and I spent the day doing that.

The oldest had been invited to her boyfriends for a lobster dinner and she couldn't disappoint them, "they had bought her a lobster!"  The youngest wanted to spend time with a relative on her mom's side that she had not spoken of much, but apparently this person was the end all for Ashley.  I guess when someone is that important to me, I talk about them, perhaps this person was only important that day.

They both came in to open gifts.  They brought nothing for Bill.  This was  my first Christmas with them and I was so surprised that they didn't  have a gift for him, nor the time to share a meal. They could have made time, if not that day, another, Christmas is a holiday to be shared with family and I understand you can not meet your obligations to everyone that day, but you can celebrate it on another day, they had no desire to, they wanted their gifts, they ate a noodle and took off.

Bill told me that this was his life with them.  They were always there with their hands out, but never to give, always to take.  They had told him "his gift" was being "made" and they would give it to him later. He never got a gift, that day or later and I was pissed that they would treat him like this. I thought it was just this day, but I was told later, this was just how they were.

I didn't want anything for Christmas.  I had Bill, what more could I ask for?  But he bought me my book, which was more than enough, a DVD player, Calphalon cooking utensils, a Nike sports watch and non-skid hangers as some of my things in his closet would always fall off the hanger.  I loved how he really thought about the gift.  Unlike Killer, he didn't require a list and buy every thing on it, leaving no surprises.  The two of us, we just enjoyed the day to ourselves.  We watched movies, put a puzzle together and played a game. Nothing  exciting except spending time together and that was priceless to both of us.

New Year's Eve, Bill and Ashley came up to my house late. Bill had been working and we were going to be leaving the next morning for his sister's home in Pennsylvania.  They came in about eleven and I made Bill a quick dinner.  We watched the ball drop and headed to bed. It was 2004, a year that we both looked forward to for  many reasons, some we knew, some I was unaware of and some we had no idea were laid ahead of us.

Bill was not himself when we were visiting his sister. He was closed, not wanting to talk, responding with comments so unlike him and distant. I didn't know what was going on, how just a week ago he and I were opening up to discussion over topics that were hard for him to discuss to him slamming the book shut on any discussion about anything personal. He wasn't the playful Bill that I had come to know in the past couple of months, but that weekend, while watching some documentary on television about a rapper, he came up with the name that he would call me, "C-City" standing for Cindy's city.

His birthday was right around the corner and I had been told they had  never been memorable.  I could so relate to this! His second marriage had occurred the day after his birthday.  It was the first marriage for his second wife and she wanted a memorable date, 1-23-2000. Like me with Chappy, he realized soon before the wedding that he should not marry this woman, but he did.

The marriage didn't last that long and she made sure he was going to pay for whatever he did to hurt her. I only got bits and pieces of what happened, but he feel in love with an "image" not the woman. He fell in love with the lifestyle, not the woman.  She was the personal assistant to actor, director and writer, Harold Ramis, known for his movies, Ghostbuster, Stripes, Caddyshack, Groundhog's Day and Animal House. They were married in his home as I recall and it was a beautiful ceremony, but I came across the video much later and Bill, the groom for the day, did not appear to be happy throughout the whole video, in fact, he appeared to just be participating in the event. It was sad, to see him going through the motions, but no emotion usually seen on the faces of brides and grooms.

I made arrangements to take him to George's Steak House.  It was a very expensive restaurant, nestled back in an area that was not visible to the car passing on the road.  I knew about it from a business dinner that I had participated in several years ago. It was quaint, romantic and the food was to die for! Bill was so surprised.  I didn't tell him where we were going, I did a Bill thing, I called, told him what I was wearing so he could dress appropriately, he came to pick me up since the restaurant was on my end of town and I surprised him!

On his actual birthday, we both took the day off. He was forty eight. We slept in and then spent the day shopping. We had lunch at his "favorite birthday" spot, MCL. I bought a new TV for my bedroom and he hooked that up along with the DVR he had purchased for me at Christmas. We were getting ready to go out for a nice dinner, when his oldest daughter called.  She wanted some thing, but discovered in the conversation that we were celebrating his birthday.  We ended up cancelling our plans to drive  to his house and "celebrate" with the girls.  We bought a pizza on our way there and they showed up soon after.

The oldest wanted to borrow his Calphalon baking pan to bake her boyfriend a birthday cake.  No cake for her Dad.  No card for her Dad. Nothing, but she was preparing for her boyfriend's birthday a couple days away.  He was hesitant to give her the pan.  They had this track record of borrowing his things and never returning them, but he did and they both grabbed a slice of pizza and took off.

He was so disappointed again.  We sat on the couch and I could tell his heart was broken by yet another slap in the face.  "They treat me like this every year and I'm tired of it. From now on, no  more, it's just you and me.  Here we had these plans to enjoy my birthday and I cut it short for them, thinking they wanted to spend time with me and what happened? No more."

I was beginning to understand just how self centered his children were.  It saddened me to see them treat him the way that they did, but they were older and if they wanted to do some thing for their dad, they could have. It wasn't like they were young children who didn't really know when their dad's birth date actually was.

This funk that he had been in since the first of the year, continued.  He was still Bill, but there was some thing bothering him and he would not share. I later discovered what it was, why he didn't share, I'll never know.

I thought he was divorced.  I thought that was all behind him, but he was still going through it when we met.  She was dragging it out and sucking him dry of every thing he had. I would come over and he'd be on the phone to her and I had no idea. He'd get up and leave the room.  I thought he just wanted privacy, but he was angry and didn't want me to see that side of him. 

It was mid March, life was good.  He called me at home, very serious and said we needed to talk. We had been talking about landscaping his back yard, building a deck, putting a pond in and planting bushes.  He had built this house so there was a lot of things to do to make it his home. I understood the importance of this all too well.

But that night, he was serious and it was not about landscaping. "I don't like being away from you. I want you here, all the time, forever." I felt the same way.