Three Years.

It was an afternoon in late May of 2003, and I had some quasi work meeting someone else had arranged at the motorcycle dealership JM was managing. I was observing him closely for the first time, in profile, while he looked at his work computer in his little office at Spectrum Motorsports. He played with the tidy soul patch he kept under his lip and peered through his stylish glasses. He leaned forward in his chair, presumably to relieve the sciatica from a bulging disc he was suffering from those days. And just as he leaned forward, it was as if he suddenly started to sparkle, and I realized what a good looking man I was having a meeting with.

We kept talking business, but for the remainder of the meeting an additional agenda snuck its way into my side of the conversation. I could see he was responding to it, so I kept it up, trying to impress him with my bike knowledge and experience. I’m sure to an outsider I sounded a fool, but I know now that he did not care; he was viewing me through the other side of the sparkly lens.

It took one full month for him to ask me on a date. Ten months later, we snuck off to the county offices and were married.

And then, just after our fourth wedding anniversary, he died. That was three years ago today.

A lot of stuff happened in between. And presumably, I am still processing some of it because I still dream of John-Mark weekly. Or rather, he is in my dreams weekly, they are not necessarily about him.

In these dreams I am back in my old life in San Diego, in my old house, and JM is is always there. He, and my life, are as they were and whatever is happening in the dream, in  my life, is just taking place as normal. Sometimes I am mad at him, sometimes we are traveling somewhere, sometimes we are talking. I never think to ask him questions because while I am dreaming, everything is as it was and I don’t realize he is gone and that in my waking life I am living in Spain and in another relationship. My dreaming life hasn’t yet caught up to my waking life. Or maybe my dreaming life is pulling me back to try to resolve all that can never be resolved between us.

And it never truly can be. Oh sure, I can come to terms with things and let things go or “get over it” as some idiots like to offer as (useless) advice. But I’ll never know who he was on his way to becoming or what dreams he would achieve. I’ll never know how the story above was supposed to play out…

So I will appreciate what I have now. Everything and every friend and every family member and person in my life. And know that I am not alone in missing him.