A note to the reader: This story takes place forty years after an earlier story of mine,
Love Shack
. I owe a big thank you to Erin Page for suggesting several major revisions to this story. Her creativity and candor have been invaluable. All characters and situations are complete fiction, a product of my fertile imagination. Any similarity to actual people and situations is purely a coincidence. All constructive criticism is welcome.
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As it was for many people, the novel coronavirus pandemic was life changing for me. Despite taking every precaution under the sun, my wife Terri and I came down with the virus. We never figured out how we caught it. One day I came home from work and Terri was running a 102 degree fever. I contacted her doctor and her pulmonologist because Terri had severe asthma. She was prescribed several medicines. Because I now had to quarantine, I asked our neighbors, Rita and Mark, to pick them up for us.
Things went downhill from there. By the next morning, I too was running a high fever and Terri was coughing constantly. Just a trip to the bathroom exhausted her and had her out of breath. I called her doctor and we arranged for the EMTs to transport Terri to the hospital. When I kissed her good-bye that morning, little did I know that it would be the last time I saw her alive.
My VA doctor tried something different with me. She prescribed Tamiflu, which didn't sound right at all, but I actually responded. Within two days, my fever was gone. I had a slight cough and weakness, but I was well. I told Terri's doctors, but they didn't think it was an appropriate treatment for her.
At first Terri responded well to treatment, but after five days, she suddenly took a turn for the worse. I later found out that Terri had a cytokine storm that took over her lungs. She was put in the ICU and intubated. She passed away two days later. I was not allowed to be with her when she died. Her death left a massive emotional wound. .
The days after Terri's death were a blur and my memory of that time is slightly worse than foggy. When I married Terri, I also married into her Protestant denomination. Our congregation was very supportive. There was a funeral, but there were only four people in the church -- me, the pastor, the music director who played the piano, and a technician who livestreamed the event for friends and family. I found out that over 550 people attended the event online. That fact alone gave me great solace. The wound slowly began to heal.
Rita kept bringing food over to me for at least a week, but I didn't have much of an appetite. Over the next three months I lost twenty pounds. A deep depression settled in as I struggled with the grief of losing my wife and best friend. I had known Terri for thirty-seven years and we had been married for thirty-three. We had met when I was in flight school to become a navy pilot. We were married four years later. She stood by me through the good times and the bad. Through seven deployments and ten moves to different duty stations around the world. She was a wonderful navy wife and the perfect partner. She blessed me with two beautiful children, Aria and Daniel. Aria married a wonderful man eight years ago and we now have three beautiful grandchildren. Dan followed in my footsteps and became a naval officer, although he went through the Naval Academy and became a submariner.
Dan is stationed on the West Coast. Aria and her family live in the heartland. Terri and I settled in New England because I landed a well-paying management position with a major defense contractor after I retired from the Navy. Now that Terri was gone, I was regretting that decision and I wished I was closer to my children.
My friends and neighbors rallied around me though and took care of me as much as the pandemic would allow. The wound healed some more. In the warmer months, I was invited to a number of events, often with the intention of having me meet a nice lady. Nevertheless, I really didn't have the desire to jump into a relationship. There wasn't a lot of joy in my life and I felt increasingly isolated. That winter was exceptionally lonesome, isolated in my home, working remotely via Zoom, with the occasional visit to the plant.
Living in my house was difficult because everywhere there were reminders of Terri. I contemplated selling and moving, but starting over in a new location seemed just as hard. Doing that alone would have been a struggle.
One joy was weekly visits via Face Time with my grandchildren. Another was opening up Facebook and seeing a post from my daughter about her family. I have never accepted many friend requests. I think I have a total of forty friends. I limited them to family and old shipmates. I generally ignored people from high school, although I did accept three dear, old friends from my hometown: Kathleen Finn, her sister Becki, and Julianne Hildegard. All three are married and also have grandchildren. It is fun to see how their lives have progressed.
Terri and I had always planned on retiring when I reached sixty. Between my military retirement and some savvy investments over the years, financially I was in wonderful shape. I didn't see any reason to not go through with that plan. So at the end of July I said good-bye to the corporate world and decided I would start traveling as soon as the pandemic eased.
I came home after a nice retirement party on the company's patio with the intention of posting pictures of the party on Facebook. When I opened the app, there on the right was a friend request from Marianne Thorborg Huddleston. Marianne. Wow!
I have known Marianne since kindergarten, fifty-five years ago. Although, the last time I saw her in person was when we were both nineteen. Perhaps I need to back up.
Growing up, Marianne lived two blocks from my house and we walked to and from school together every day from kindergarten through the end of eighth grade. We did everything together. When we were in third grade, I remember stopping in the park by the fountain in our hometown where we promised that we would love each other forever. When her family moved away the summer before we started high school I was heartbroken.
I didn't hear from her until the summer between my first and second year of college. I was the head lifeguard at our local lake and she came back in search of me. She was attending an Ivy League school. I was studying engineering and enrolled in NROTC at Tech. I spent six glorious days with her that summer. I was her first lover and she took my heart away with her to Cornell when she left.
I wrote to her constantly, but I rarely ever heard from her. I tried to arrange a meeting again. I even saved money to fly to New York State to see her. Nevertheless, by the following spring she had once again disappeared from my life. I loved that woman more than life itself and I acutely felt the rejection. That was another emotional wound, although it has healed.
About ten years later, I was reading the newspaper and I saw a picture of Ambassador and Mrs. Huddleston in Berlin. I could have sworn that the woman was Marianne, and upon further inquiry, I found out that it was her. Over the next decade or so, every now and then I would see something about them in the news.
People
had an article about her and I found out that she met the future ambassador when she had a translating internship at the US Embassy in Bonn, the German capitol at the time. They were married when she graduated from college. David Huddleston was twenty years her senior and I learned they had two children. They had traveled and lived throughout the world in a variety of diplomatic roles. I learned that Marianne had become a well-respected diplomat in her own right. She also worked for a number of charities.
That article twenty years ago was the last news I had of her, although I can't say that I sought her out. So when I saw the friend request, I was a bit torn. Should I accept it and have that ancient wound ripped apart, or just ignore it? I contemplated what I should do for several minutes, the old hurt and rejection returning. I really didn't need that. For the time being, I decided to ignore it.
When I retired from naval service and accepted the corporate position, Terri and I built a custom post-and-beam home on one hundred acres of forested land in Vermont. One of my great joys is walking or cross-country skiing through my woods. Even though evening was approaching, I decided a walk would be a great way to work through my emotions regarding Marianne. Part of me was very happy for her and the life she built for herself. Part of me was jealous because in my youth I had always hoped that I would be the person with whom she built that life. The final part of me felt emotional pain.
As I walked, reality set in and I came to my senses. I realized that Terri and I had been perfect for one another. She had the ideal temperament to deal with the stresses of my naval career. When I was the commanding officer of first a squadron and later an air wing, she had supported me completely and stepped up to be the unofficial leader of the spouses when we were deployed. I don't think Marianne could ever have put up with half of the stressful situations that both the Navy and I had subjected Terri to. I felt tremendous gratitude for having had her as my partner for thirty-three wonderful years. This reflection confirmed that I had made the correct decision in marrying her all those years ago. I was a very lucky man.
