My Love

I am in my eightieth year. 
Most of them have been very good years.
I birthed and raised four children and they are a wonderful reflection of what I hoped they would be.  They are smart and kind and loving.  They all have excellent, growing families.

However, missing from much of my life was palpable love.
I married twice, each time, in retrospect, for wrong reasons.  Each marriage failed. The second in 1973.  So, for purposes of discussion I have been alone for over forty years.  Actually the fourth child went off to college in 1987, so truly alone for more than thirty years.

Apparently I am fiercely independent and became accustomed to my life as a single woman, healthy, employed and aging satisfactorily.  I am in very good shape for my age and I was devastated to learn some five years ago that I was really not employable.  Never thought that was a possibility.  My Mom worked at the Lordsburg Public Library until she was eighty-four.

My children do not expect me to have my nose in their lives, even when I want to.  My little lake house was charming but not sustainable without additional income to augment my social security pension.

To address all of these facts and find myself in the most beautiful place I know, in an apartment I could afford, making friends I treasure and zigzagging between the Bay, the beach, the mountains and the beautiful weather and flowers, I had it made.

On May 25, 2018, I accepted an invitation to join my friends in a tour group and travel for the day to San Sebastian.  It is a beautiful old mining town up in the Sierra Madre.  At a stop on a newish bridge enroute, for tacos, my friend Jorge, his photographer, and I walked over to get a good view of this bridge and I tossed my phone to someone to record the moment.

Here is the picture:

You cannot see his hand on my shoulder.  I can still feel it.  There was no way of knowing if I would ever see him again.  But I felt it then.  

My friend Jorge, the other guy, blue shirt, responded some days later when I said how much I had enjoyed the music mix on the long drive home that day.  He said, "Cesar did that.  He will make you a copy." " Ask him, he's right over there."  I did and he did and it was the beginning of our friendship, strengthened by pictures, conversations and time.

In the course of the next year and a half we went from friends, to best friends, to an odd mother/son, to more and more.  We acknowledged our love for one another early and often.  It was not ideal on any of those levels.  His living Mother and he were on good terms.  The woman in his life and he were not.  

An excellent photographer who'd squandered his own studio on youthful misbehavior, estrangement from his children, and a less remunerative career as a tour photographer dependent on an ever increasing cell phone group of people for income, his life was not ideal.

I stop to say this, never in my long life has anyone treated me better, been more encouraging, complimentary and uplifting.  As our relationships developed we became almost manic texters. At least every day one of his texts to me said "cuidado, yo quiero."
That is, "take care, I love you."

We share a birthdate, not year, and he saw that as somewhat magical in itself.  When I was pointed out to a tour group as his friend, he would insist "best friend."  He helped me move to this new apartment.  When I was dazzled by his expertise and speed in completing the move, he answered.  "Hey, I'm Mexican, we know how to pack."

I could go on.  But I cannot.  This week he killed himself.  His last text to me was "perdoname a mi."  Forgive me.

All these years isolated from love and feelings and here I am devastated.  He was the best and great love of my life.  I will miss him every day that remains.  He should have been at my funeral and instead I joined mourners at his wake last night.  I knew he was struggling and I tried to help.  Obviously I was not successful.

I am so sad.