Have you ever noticed that we’re all confronted by moments when we have a chance to throw our happiness away? Maybe “confronted” isn’t the right term, but I’ve arrived at the point of making a major life decision often over the years, and sometimes my choice has been the “wrong” one. Happiness would – or might have – been the outcome, had I made the other choice.
After I’d finished college in Madison, Wisconsin, I made the choice to stay there and look for a job. Not finding one after several months, I’d come to the point where I was about to throw in the towel and come back to Hawai`i. But, as luck would have it, I suddenly found a position as manager of a record store in Madison.
My assistant manager was a talented dancer, a duel-major in French and Dance, who was taking a year-long break from school. As the months passed, we became very close. You know how it’s said you should never date someone you work with?
So, after many months of a strengthening relationship, we came to the point where we decided to get married. One of my highlight-memories in that faraway time, was the day we picnicked in a place outside of Madison called Blue Mounds. It’s a stunning vast range of grassy, Native-American burial mounds.
Post-picnic, we decided to explore the area. Coming to the top of one of the huge mounds, we saw, at the bottom on the other side, a small chapel.
“Why do you suppose there’s a church in the middle of these mounds?” I asked.
Puzzled as I was, she said that she couldn’t understand it since the people buried here long ago very likely weren’t inclined to follow an imported religion.
But we were both amazed by the look of this chapel. After we’d seen the inside through the windows, we both, magically, came to the decision that this would be the ideal place to be married, provided it was available for that kind of ceremony.
Now despite our having arrived at this decision, something unfortunate unfolded. Her ex-boyfriend, someone with whom she’d had a very serious relationship going back many years before she and I met, moved back into town.
The result was not good.
As I would discover, this gentleman had been the manager of the same record store I was managing now. I, in fact, was his replacement.
After they’d broken up, he moved up north to manage another record store with the same company.
Still tied to the company then, and because our district manager had been promoted to Midwest regional manager, this ex had been promoted to be my district manager. This meant that I had to report directly to him.
As fate would have it, my fiancé was still very much in love with this longtime boyfriend.
Now Madison, while not a huge city, is a very big town. But myriad as choices of an apartment he could rent were, he just so happened to choose one in the building right next-door to mine. What are the chances?
All the ingredients of a messy stew were ready to be mixed into the worst stew imaginable.
And so it went. She literally, sometimes nightly, often multiple times, would run between the two apartments, bouncing back and forth like a human pinball. There was no doubt she was torn, but in the end, that longtime romance between them kindled into a flame much more blindingly bright than the one she and I had started.
It was a miserable time for all of us. But in the end, it turned out only to be a miserable time for me. On all fronts. My boss breaking up my marriage plans. I mean, I couldn’t stand looking at him, let alone talk to him about store business. Instead, I told my ex, as assistant manager, that she had to deal with any kind of business discussion necessary.
Of course, you can’t function this way in the business world. In the end, emotionally beaten into the ground, I gave my one-month notice, not to my new district boss, but to our regional manager, the man who’d hired me.
Dragging my ass back to Hawai`I, I was an emotional mess. It took months for me to start even looking for a job on O`ahu. And when I gradually came up to full speed, the holiday season was right around the corner, maybe six months after I’d returned.
I ended up taking a job with Duty Free Shoppers. I enjoyed working there. I’d brightened up considerably thanks to the people I worked with there.
And then.
Christmas came around. One day, checking the mailbox after coming home from work, I was surprised, and I mean really, really surprised like hit with a stun-gun, to find an envelope addressed to me from my ex in Madison.
At first, I thought about tossing it in the trash. Or even burning it in the hibachi. But while downing many beers contemplating how best to get rid of it without reading it, the mix of my curiosity, my still being in love with this woman, and lots of alcohol, I final gave in and opened it.
The decision to read it was, well, maybe not a good one. In brief, she told me that she had broken up with that boyfriend for good, and would I consider the possibility of moving back to Madison.
First, of course, thanks to a tankful of beer, I cried. I mean I cried bigtime. Then, after I’d exhausted that part of my sloshing emotions, I got mad. I mean angry plus. A what-the-fuck would hardly begin to cover what I felt. Blinding rage would be in the ballpark.
By the next morning, sobered up, I made the command decision that I simply wouldn’t respond. I never did.
I go to Madison for a week or so every year to write. That’s all I do when I’m there.
Before the first time I went back, eleven years ago, I made the decision that I was going to contact her if she still lived there. After a search for any kind of contact information, I discovered that she did live there, and I was able to find her email address.
Without hesitation, I emailed her, told her I was coming to Madison, and asked if she might be interested in getting together for lunch.
She responded right away. Yes, she said, she thought that would be “lovely.”
I said I’d get in touch when I arrived, and we could figure something out.
When I made it to Madison, I emailed her to set something up. Her response this time was that she’d be unable to meet with me.
The first thought that leaped to mind was that she’d told her husband about the idea and that he’d asked her not to do it. The second thought was that, because of conflicting emotions of some sort, she’d simply decided not to do it. Ah well.
Three years ago, headed back to Madison, I made the decision to contact her again. I tried the same email address only to find that it was no longer good.
Not surprised, since I guessed she was retired as well, I searched for current contact information. And what I found, well, I cried, but not at all the way I had when she asked if I’d move back. This time it was for true, deep sorrow.
The picture was not of an older woman. It was a photo of her when she was much younger. It was of the woman I see whenever I remember her. The way she looked when we met.
The obituary said that she’d passed away three years earlier after a 10-year battle with Parkinson’s Disease. This was devastating. And whether my supposition is correct or not, I felt as if the reason why she changed her mind about meeting with me that first time I went back was because she’d decided that she didn’t want me to see her in the middle of this battle with Parkinson’s.
Now when I go back to Madison – I just came back last night – I always leave flowers at her grave. Those moments I spend talking to her and remembering what it was like when we were planning to marry, well, I leave it to you to imagine what those moments are like for me.
Lanning Lee 