A Love Story

by Raymund Tamayo

Image by jcomp on Freepik

I was an odd person. I had many questions about my life and myself. I was the kind of girl who couldn’t connect with another person on a deeper level, or a higher level, whichever the case. I had had too many blah relationships that I felt love was always out of reach. I was wandering, lost, alone, but dreamed that somewhere there was a person for me who would understand me and accept the bags of baggage I carried into my adult life.

I spent every penny I had on poetry books and music. I went without money for the essentials in life just to buy books and CD’s. No matter what happened to me, I could find answers in poetry and music that it became my constant companion. With these things with me… I knew there had to be another person out there looking for me the same as I was looking for him.

I had a friend who was trying to write responses to notes, poems, and letters she receives from a young man that she wanted to marry. She came to me and I loaned her my collection of poems. The pages were marked with special prose; words that had significant meaning were underlined… sometimes twice. She wrote to him, using the words I marked, and eventually she did woo him into marriage. But only years later, she divorced the young man.

I was sad for her, because I knew of his depth and qualities from his writings for her. Years later, 20 years in fact, I attended a church conference and who should I meet, but the young man who married and divorced my former friend. He was older, wiser, and just as genuine. He was still the poet I had remembered. I was fascinated and 365 days later, I became his wife. Friday, July 18 will be our 25th anniversary, we are old and gray now, but his love never waned even a bit. He is the same person to whom I helped a college friend send poetry responses and now he is my husband.

In my cluttered and confused life during my 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s, I never thought that I would find someone who would complement me. Now, I am alive again, realizing that I was destined to be with him not only in this lifetime but for always. He still writes poems, but this time they were all for me and about me, and smiled when he gave them to me daily. He smiled the way I heard him smile a thousand times in my heart, and during those moments I feel that the long wait was worth more than enough.

His poems affect me more than those done by poets of my first collection ever did. He has inspired me, given me tickets around the room and back. He has bought for me roses like everybody buys roses everybody. He has pushed the clouds away and he helped me find what is hardest to find… me. He’s just a man who need and wants, I love him so very much because he can touch that inner part of me, connect and understand me the way no one can. He has caught me in the warmth.

Now, we’re in our mid-70’s, and he’s very ill. I know I am going to lose him in the next few months, but it’s all right. We know our spirits will meet again, but the separation until that day would seem to be too unbearable for me. I’ve been re-reading to him his poems and we’ve been listening to his music every day now. They will be my companions when he goes. But what I do know is that whatever happens, we are still together. There will be no goodbyes.