Reflections On Life

Funk 'N' Stein · #1 05-31-2008, 08:58 PM

My job often requires me to visit the town I lived in as a newly married man with a young family. I was married in 1987 and my 3 children were born in '88, '89 and 91.

I spent the day there, this last Wednesday.

Anyway, I lived in this town from '87 until '95, at which time we moved away as I had received a promotion at work. Having settled in our new town, my wife decided to leave the marriage in '98. I then spent two years grieving in loneliness, searching for answers as to why things had gone so horribly wrong.

Fast forward 2 years and I met another woman. We were married in 2002, but the marriage was an unmitigated disaster . I HAD to leave the marriage in 2006.

Bear with me.....

Lunchtime last wednesday...Im working in my office and I decide to take a walk along my old street to reminisce.

The house we moved into in '87 (where my three children were conceived) has gone. This was the house in which my wife, full of joy, told me that she was pregnant with our first child, on that bright spring day in 1987. It's all just public open space now. I fossicked around and found, lying on the ground (which was right under where the old back doorstep had been situated), the very baby spoon (long since forgotten)that my wife and I had used to feed our infant children.

I saw the trees where I had made a tarzan swing for my kids; The patch of ground where I had built them a fort; the old willow tree in which i had fashioned a bird perch out of a two by four; the cotoneaster bush that I had once clipped into a work of art ( now a scraggly tree) and the soil where I had made my wife a herb garden and grown my crop of 8 foot high tomato plants in the summer of '93.

I felt the tears welling up. I desperately wanted my old life back. I m 44 now and single. My youngest child is now nearly 17. I still love my first wife...but she's in another dimension.

I was overcome by sadness until...... I saw the tree I had planted in the back yard to commemorate the birth of my first son. Yes it was the tree! I almost hadn't recognized it, it had grown so much!

It's tall and strong and two feet thick. Ive decided that Im gonna take my three kids back there this July and take a photo of him standing next to the tree.

Suddenly life seems ok again.....

OtterOnBass · #2 05-31-2008, 10:04 PM

Wow, you really have me empathizing with you. I'm sorry. You write very well, do you write lyrics? This kind of sentiment would make a very bittersweet song.

GianGian · #3 05-31-2008, 10:04 PM

I almost cried reading...that's a sad story there...but let's hope for the future. We never know what the future will bring us!

Robert B · #4 06-01-2008, 05:08 AM

Very touching post. Things will work out for you in time. There are more joys (and sorrows) ahead. Your life is still growing, just like that tree. Sincere thanks for sharing that.

jazzy grille · #5 06-01-2008, 07:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Funk 'N' Stein

Suddenly life seems ok again.....

It always will be.

JonathanD · #6 06-01-2008, 12:31 PM

Great read. I was right there with you.

I remember my father taking me back to the house he grew up in. It was still there, but it had been taken down and was in a pile. It's always been hard for me to see how things that I have loved change, die and decay. But I will stop ow, because I would hope you would write more, and that I would write less.
Jonathan