Contact With The Exes: 1 dead, 1 dieing, 1 missing....

     It's been a strange season of trying to bind up old wounds, clean up forgotten messes, mend some fences, and other such silly sayings. Some of those situations are my doing, some not. And I'm not at all sure why I felt compelled to seek out people from my past or revisit experiences that went unresolved. It just happened that way. I reached out, I found a few things that I could do to put things right, but most everything that was unfinished or unresolved was just gonna hafta stay that way. I'm sure that's normal & natural for everyone. It's not that I feel the "end is coming" or anything like that. It's more like, this chapter is ready to close and I want to have a quick review to see if there's anything I can do to make things smoother, take off some of the rough edges here and there. I dislike leaving a mess behind, whether it's at a friends house after spending a weekend, or a hotel room bed all unmade, or even a camp site. I like to leave things tidy.

     The first thing I did was look up the contact info of old lovers. Yeah, I know, that was a really stupid thing to do. And what's worse, I found them all on Facebook, complete with addresses and phone numbers and current relationship status info. The first fellah had gone missing about a year ago and his family and friends were still looking for him. They were using the Facebook page as a kind of clearing house for info, and I walked right into the middle of an FBI missing persons operation. I dunno if he's actually dead or alive, but they sure as hell wanted to know more. Maybe he still owed someone money - who knows? To be painfully honest, I didn't know the guy very well and we kinda sort bumped into each other a few decades ago, at a boozy college party where we kinda sorta recognized each other and we knew no one else at the party and so it seemed sorta kinda safe enough to hook up.  I have had no bumping into or other kind of contact for him for many many years, so I had no info to divulge. But that didn't mean I wasn't gonna have the bright lite shown on me. Yeah, I got called in to make a statement. Geeeze, that was terrific fun!! NOT!!! But if it helps his loved ones in some way - if they can hang on to their hopes and dreams for just one more day - and that obviously gives them comfort, then, well, okay. Me personally, I would want to know the worst. I could not keep hanging on indefinitely.

   I was told by the FBI interviewer that the missing fellow had a number of pissed off girlfriends and had most probably just changed his name, swapped his car, grew a beard and moved to the other side of the country. "It's not hard to get lost in this country," said the interviewer, as he adjusted his crotch for the fourteenth time and snorked up some nasal phlegm.....

   When I finally got dis-entangled from that mess, I decided I should stop trying to look up old flames, which no doubt would have been a Good Thing. But, no, no, my insane irrational pre-menopausal self got the better of me and I looked up another fellah I used to go out with, and which - in fact, I'd been married to for a very brief three months at the end of the 1970's. Or maybe that was back in the early 14th Century.... I'm still not sure...it was a crazy summer....anywho, this guy had yet another wife (he was on his fourth) who informed all and sundry on his Facebook page that he's had yet another round of colon cancer to remove yet another 6 feet of cancerous colon and was now sporting a colostemy bag which she got to empty a couple times per day and bowel management was now her entire focus in life. She sounded about ready to start posting photos of it. I was off that page faster than a spider about to touch a hot skillet....

    I was told by a distant mutual friend that he'd been on death's door since the end of the 1990's and people were just waiting for The End Of Fred as they had been since the first few feet of diseased colon had been yanked, but there was a growing number of people in their social circle and in their families who felt there was nothing at all wrong with his colon,  or with any of his guts, but just the plain fact that his 4th wife's cooking was known to be the worst on the planet and anyone who had ever been invited over for dinner went home feeling certain that they, too, were dieing of a terminal intestinal malady.

     The last bit of catch-up news was far less amusing, and far more permanent. A man whom I'd been married to for three years, who was the father of my only child, was definitely Dead & Gone. The cause of that was publicly reported as a "road accident" but privately admitted to be a suicide. There was only one person who had any accurate info about that incident, and that was the woman he called wife at the time of his death. I was very cautious about approaching her for info, but I'm glad I did. She was honest and open and smart and funny and totally lovely. She was a delight to speak with. We'd had very little contact over the years, and that had been quite toxic, and that had been totally my fault. I'll cop to that. But the man we both loved, we had both lost, and all the silly stupid jealous crap just melted away in me and I felt such terrible sadness for her, for her two children she had with him. But I learned some things about her. She was happily remarried, employed, had a home, was so proud that both her kids were in college, had lost (thru discipline & courage) a huge amount of weight, and I was so proud to know her. For what she went thru and for what she was gonna bear for the rest of her life, she had grace and strength and courage I could only envy.

    She was exactly the kind of chicita I would want to call Friend.

    Sometimes in life, when you peel away the crud, when you scrub hard and finally get the thick, nasty crust of ego and selfishness to let go of your soul, when you can finally look around you and see others not as reflections of yourself, but as they are, as they truly are, you find that there are some terrific people out there in the world. People who have open, honest hearts, kindness all the way to their back collar buttons, and way down deep toughness.

     I want to know people like that and I want to be one of them, too.

     Thanks, Jenni. I'm smiling right now because of you.