She remembers the first time they met. What’s it been? Oh yes, 43 years ago. A lifetime of memories. They were very young. The first thing she noticed about him is that he was very kind. They started dating. No boy that she’d ever dated had been this kind to her. After several months passed, they moved in together. Living together was popular in those days. They decided to eventually marry.
They married and those were the halcyon days. Theirs was such a calm household. She’d never lived in a tranquil household. She’d grown up in a household filled with hysteria, yelling, upheaval. When she looks back, she thinks that’s the reason she married him the first time. Her search for love and peace. Her parents weren’t brave. They didn’t discourage her. His mother was brave. She took both of them aside individually and advised them against marriage. She knew they loved each other, but they came from such different backgrounds. His mother knew it would never work out in the long run. They didn’t listen to her and she was right. She died a year later.
It’s been a long time and memories of that early time, those early years, have faded now especially since there are so many bad memories. But, she remembers the early years as good, fun, romantic. Something she only recently learned wiped away some of it. He told her he had an affair for the last ten years of their first 18 year marriage. She’d had no idea. She had been crushed and nothing had been the same since. He had persecuted her so badly during their first divorce for the things she had done.
Their second marriage to each other was a mistake. She had to walk away now from the good memories and the bad ones. The good ones broke her heart. The bad ones would make her old and bitter. She didn’t quite know how to walk away from the boy she grew up with and the very different man he had turned out to be. It had all gone so terribly wrong.
She hung her head and cried all night as the telephone remained silent.
This post is a part of Linda Hill’s #JusJoJan writing challenge for 2018.
The Write Scribe 