If You Could See the Future, A Glimpse, Would You Look?

In the late summer of 2006, I threw my hat in to the dating ring.  I tried Internet dating again.  I met a man named, Paul.  He had recently lost his wife after close to thirty years of  marriage.  He was heartbroken over the loss due to breast cancer, but deep down inside, I think he was more angered by the wrench this threw into his life plan.  We met at a local ice cream shop the first time. He was six foot five and he did not resemble the picture he  had posted or perhaps he was more photogenic than in person.  We sat and ate an ice cream cone and enjoyed conversation.  I think it was more therapeutic for him as he had only been a widower for less than six months.

I had an understanding that most women would not have been able to comprehend as they had not experienced the death of a spouse.  He was attending grief counseling to work through his loss.  I had tried grief counseling at a local church, more of a support group, but after the first meeting, I decided my grief could not compare to the women in this small group.  They had been married for thirty to sixty years, their husbands had died from long term illnesses or from unexpected heart attacks, where the wife had left the room to get a cup of coffee only to return to find her husband dead.  They had lost their right arm, they didn't know how to function without their husband. I had nothing to offer to this group and I actually found it more depressing for myself.  I couldn't imagine living with someone so long, being so dependent upon them and one day, they were gone and these women struggled to pay bills or drive to the grocery store. They were all retired, so they spent a considerable amount of time outside of this group doing activities.  I just didn't fit in, so I chose to deal with it on my own.  Apparently not that successful if my parents suggested a dog pulled me out of my grief.

Love Notes from B

Paul was a human resource director for a temporary employee service company.  His late wife had been a stay at home mom and started college after their boys were grown. She had just graduated from nursing school and the plan was she would return to work and he would retire.  He felt robbed that he would not be able to retire now. He couldn't part with any thing that belonged to her and he wouldn't accept help.

He was not someone I had a great interest in, but he could have been a friend.  I wasn't looking for love in all the wrong places, I was looking for companionship.  I had found love and I doubted I'd ever find it again.

We went out a few times and then he started to have feelings for me. His therapist had told him it was the grief talking to him, not his heart.  She was on target with that diagnosis.  He had been married all his life, he didn't know how to be single. He thought maybe we could just have a relationship of periodic "gets-together." I was fine with that as I was not physically attracted to him, just enjoyed his companionship, but every time we got together, he wanted to talk about his sorrow.  I was trying to lift my head above water, not drown more in my sorrow.

Love notes from B

He would call out of loneliness.  I hate talking on the phone.  I talk on the phone for a living, so when I am home, I do not want to be connected to the phone at all.  He would call on his way home from work and in the middle of a conversation, cut it off as he had arrived at home.  The final straw was when he called and in the middle of our conversation that for once was about my life, he said the pizza had been delivered and hung up, no good bye, no talk to you later.  The next time he called, I was direct, "You need to spend time healing and the first thing you need is to get over the anger and start working on removing your wife from your house. As long as her belongings are still in the house, her memory will linger every where you look. You are not a friend to anyone right now. I am a year ahead of you in this cycle and I can not allow you to bring me back down." He understood that he had been using me as a person to use up time that he was feeling sorry for himself because I understood.  If I allowed him to continue, I would have never seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

In May 2007, a friend asked  me if I'd like to go to her sister's birthday party.  I was unsure of this.  I'm not one to "party" or "party" with complete strangers, but she told me there would be a physic there and I should come and have a reading.  I'd never been to one before. My Mom and her sisters used to go on a semi regular basis, in fact when I married Killer, mom had just been and she told me the physic told her I'd be married twice.  I'd live in Indiana and Illinois and they saw me working in hospitals.  I thought she was crazy.  It was 1980 and by 1998, I was in my second marriage, had moved to Indiana, Illinois and I worked for the Hospital Association where I was in and out of hospitals training supervisors how to investigate workers compensation claims.  I wondered if this person was "reliable."  She told  me he had been there last year and every one was skeptical, but a year later, a lot he had mentioned had happened to these women.  OK. Count me in.

Love Notes from B

I spoke with the handful of women who attended this party to see what they had thought of him and they were all non believers but discovered he saw things that they never imagined would happen and did.

It was my turn to go into the bedroom.  No one knew me at this party.  This was a last minute invitation, so no one could have told him a thing about me, as they themselves knew nothing about Cindy Marie.  I walked into the room and closed the door.  We exchanged pleasantries and he handed me a deck of cards that he had just shuffled.

"Split the deck into three piles and then put them together however you wish."

I did as I was told and he took the deck and laid out a sequence of cards.  The card I had chosen from the pile before he started was the Ace of Swords.  It meant that I keep my thoughts to myself and people didn't listen to me.  He hit that on the head.  I was having issues at the office with a certain adjuster who wouldn't listen to what I was telling her and was on the track of being fired.

He told me I needed to learn to say No!  And to stop arguing with myself.  He said I was too nice and spoiled people and this needed to stop. He wondered if I was seeing a widower?

I told him no, but I was a widow.  He stopped briefly and looked at the cards.  "Your husband? Bill or John? Never got to thank you for taking care of him."

Goose bumps appeared on my arms.  "He wants you to know that it meant a lot to him and that he is still around.  He needs to know that you are OK so that he can pass over."

I started crying.  How would this man who I had never met know that Bill didn't just die instantly, that I took care of him? Bill could have died instantly in a car accident, but he knew I cared for him and Bill was never able to thank me.

He told me about a man who would "return" in to my life and he told me to write down these specific initials, "J, J and R" He wasn't sure if his first name started with a J and he was a Jr or if his initials were J.J.R.  He just told me to write this down, it was important. This man would enter my life, but he'd need to heal from his previous relationship and then he went on to describe what would happen.

I could not stop crying. He told me there was a daughter, who was younger and struggling with the loss of her father.  He saw her fighting depression.  He was speaking about Ashley.  He said there was tension between these daughters and me, "Are you their mother?" 

"No. I was the step mother."

He told me that I had made a promise to watch over them, but that my husband would understand if I turned my cheek. "He's watching them and he is not happy with the way they have treated you. Do you have contact with them any longer?"

"No.  There were things that have happened that I have chosen to withdraw from connecting with them."  He suggested I keep it that way.

"They are energy drainers.  You do not need that." He continued to tell me things that I found astonishing that he knew about me.

Everyone that walked out of that bedroom was laughing, except me.  I couldn't face these women.  I was a basket case.  My friend took me into the other bedroom  to find out what had happened and she too could not believe he had hit so close to home.

I went back to him in the fall of 2007.  I was curious.  How did he know so much about me and my situations.  That summer, my folks came to spend a month with me.  I selected the "Kindness and Nurturing " Card.  The physic's name is Mark.  Mark said I had a very big heart and was very fair, but I needed to be careful. "You don't screw people over, but you get screwed a lot  and this needs to stop, you need to learn to say no!"

He told me I'd meet a lot of men.  They would be coming in and out of my life.  I asked if I should install a revolving door and we both just laughed.  I thought he was crazy again, the men he described. Where was I going to meet all of these men in an office of three  women and no social life?

He suggested that I'd reconnect with my "ex-husband." He didn't learn his lesson and he will be taken to the cleaners over an affair.  Chappy's initials were J R.  I couldn't imagine reconnecting, but then he saw me living in Florida, near my parents, such as Jacksonville and goose bumps reappeared.  Chappy's company was based out of Jacksonville, Florida.

He said Bill continued to watch over me and rolled his eyes at me. He was very concerned about me and still protected me.  I already knew this. Things had happened that were life threatening and at the last minute every thing stopped at the snap of a finger. I knew in my heart, Bill was there, he had to be, there was no way these things could  have happened without an intervention from an angel.

He said I needed to stop pouting over my loss and when the time came, I was not to change for anyone. "Be yourself, you are worthy of being loved by the right man, you just have to be patient."

My Mom had gone with me and when we walked out I told her about the former husband and the  initials as well as the Jacksonville, Florida comment. "Do  you think he's talking about  Chappy?"

"You'd be a complete asshole if you ever took him back, but I know how much you loved him."  Geez, thanks for all the support, Mom.

We had this conversation with my dad who  never voices his opinions on my life choices.  "Cindy, are you kidding me? The way he treated you, the fact you'd even think this amazes me."  My parents shared with me stories they had never told me when I was  married to Chappy. They didn't want to cause me heart ache, but now this was history.

Dad shared a couple of Saturdays that he and Chappy had gone to play golf.  Chappy had to stop by Paulies house first.  He was inside for close to forty five minutes while my father waited in the car so they could go play golf.  "Why didn't you tell me this?  I could have addressed it right then.  If I did that to Min, don't think for a minute she wouldn't have broken her ankle getting Chappy's ear about how inconsiderate I was!"

Dad and Mom shook their head, "It wasn't our place to tell you.  We don't want to interfere with your life."  Well, great! So if you knew he was a serial killer, you wouldn't want to warn me, so I could sleep with one eye open? It didn't  make any difference, except years after the fact, they shared many stories of Killer and Chappy, that I wish they would have told me at the time.

Timing.  Every thing boils down to timing.  I might have acted differently had they told me earlier.  I might not have believed them.  I might have thought they were meddling in my business.  I just let it go, it wasn't going to make a difference at this juncture.