From All Those Years Ago

               

                                    From all those years ago

 

             I don't talk about this much, but when I was 20, and in college, I got married during the Summer break. We had two close friends accompany us as witnesses, and went to a lovely country church.  We'd had all the premarital counseling, and then to a reception of sorts at a favorite inn before going home to our very first apartment. Just a couple of weeks later, I returned to college for my final year.

                 We both had some things in common. We both enjoyed international and domestic travel. We both had problems at home, from which each of us were seeking an escape. I did well in the last year of college, and then, we had planned that I would work while he completed his final year.  However, in that first year of marriage, even when the pressure was off, he wasn't thrilled about following through with our plans and completing college.  I had been serious about being married and so when I saw there were some problems, fairly quickly, we entered marital counseling.  Some of it worked and some of it left us realizing that we were poorly suited for one another in a number of respects and had very different expectations of life in general.

                 Eventually, we moved out of state, and he did not adapt particularly well there. I won't go in to additional detail because I believed then, and now, that when you were married to someone, you owe them silence on the subject of their failings and shortcomings.  We had an amicable divorce.

                  In the years that followed, he turned up like a friend from time to time. He was generally supportive of my remarriage, and he was probably relieved not to have the responsibilities, as my husband and I had four children.  My husband would occasionally help him when he had a question about his car or by explaining something a mechanic had said to him.  Eventually, he moved back to his home state, and from the occasional card, we gathered that he was happy there, and things were going as expected. Then, the cards stopped.

                  Those years were busy and so I didn't worry too much when the cards stopped.  I had built a life after him, and I hoped he had done the same. I actually thought he had probably built a life with someone else, just as I had, and that we were simply not important enough to keep contact, and that was okay.  Then, the years passed. The kids grew up, attended college, each of my parents passed, and then my youngest son died suddenly. I thought it a little strange that no matter how much went wrong in my life, that no one I'd known was in touch with him or ever let him know.  I did think it was strange that we hadn't gotten a card from him.  

                    It took all I had to recover from the losses of those years, and one of the ways I did that was to write.  My first two books were published and released in 2012, and a total of six have been released following that time. By now, not hearing from my former husband had to be deliberate. He couldn't possibly be dead. I remembered his social security number and so I ran it through the death registry, and it wasn't there, and so he had to have been alive somewhere.  More years passed, and we heard nothing, and the relatives he had that I knew, were dead.

                     Almost a year ago, we lost our thirty two year old son, some hours after a flu vaccine.  We also lost a number of friends and acquaintances during the COVID era, some of which followed their COVID injections. Within the backdrop of this terrible loss, I began to touch base with many friends I hadn't heard from in some time.

                    Eventually, I contacted a cousin of my former husband.  I learned that after he moved back to the Northeast, that he learned that he had a very rare type of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.  From the outset, his chances of recovery or survival were not good, and so he focused on palliative rather than curative care. He also didn't share much about his condition to very many people while trying to enjoy the time he had remaining.  Eventually, he had a controversial surgery, and was left for the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He spent the remainder of his life in a nursing home. Two close friends from high school were there for him. I am told that they asked a number of times I he wanted me to be contacted, but he never did, and he was quite clear on this.

                    He died in 2006, long before either of my parents or my sons, Daniel or Matthew, died. He has been gone from the Earth for years, and I never knew. I never even had an inkling, which is so very strange because I am the woman who knew when my daughter had been in a car accident, when she was merely five minutes late home from work. (I had simply seen a picture of her in my head, that she was very frightened, while driving.) I didn't even feel his absence from the Earth in all those years. 

                      Life moves quickly. Make sure that you stay in touch with those who were important in your life. I had always hoped that he would reach a point in his life where he would want a marriage and then find someone who would share his interests. It makes me sad that this likely did not happen for him. I also hate the thought that he suffered, even though I hear that he closed out his life on his own terms, as much as was possible. May he rest in peace.

               

Welcome to the Third World

                   

                                                        A mall similar to the one discussed.

 

 

   We live in a rural place but sometimes we make it to one of three small Southern cities for shopping, or something else.  We no longer go very often, and so the changes in these places seem very clear and obvious to us.

                        Yesterday, my daughter, grandson and I went shopping in a particular shopping center that we used much more about twenty years ago.  Two of our kids were in college in that city, and for that reason, they or I were at the shopping center sometimes three times a week. It was a bit upscale and had some good shopping, a medical supply shop, an electronics shop,a bank,  a Tuesday Morning, a large chain grocers, about seven good restaurants, and some physicians, dentists and veterinarian's offices. One of the restaurants had a very reasonable Asian buffet, and so when the kids who were in college needed something, or when they needed some extra money or something, I used to meet them there for lunch.

                        I fully understand that malls have a lifespan.  Upscale malls don't remain upscale malls. As they age, they may or may not find their original occupant stores remaining with them. Some stores will go out of business. Others might find a less expensive commercial rental arrangements. The only constant anywhere is change.

                       About five years ago, the medical supply store moved away. A Dollar Tree moved in. The great Asian buffet closed.  Two bus stops were placed inside the mall.  The bus stop brought more customers, but it also brought elderly and disabled customers.   I stopped at the mall one day and a woman asked me if I could help her with her copay to the methadone clinic.  I didn't but I did some checking.  Yes indeed, there is a methadone clinic on the bus line, and they do actually charge a copay.  Shortly after, a vehicle that says Mall Security began making regular sweeps throughout the mall.

                       A couple of times when I had stopped to shop in Tuesday Morning, the police were in another part of the mall. There had been fist fights, and a couple of times a shop owner had called to have someone with a psychiatric problem removed from their store.  The family and I joked that it might not be safe for us to be shopping there any more.

                      Last year, Tuesday Morning, which is a business that has existed in the US for fifty years with many branches, closed its doors. Their store remains empty. A number of other stores have closed since, including some restaurants.  I am told the homeless bring sleeping bags and sleep within the courtyard of one of the empty restaurants.

                      Yesterday, we stopped by during the day because our errand took us to the area.   My grandson wanted to make a quick trip to the Dollar Tree.  When I tried to use the bathroom there, there were signs up that said that the bathrooms were not for customers, and were for employees only.  This was funny because it's exclusively self checkout with only one employee overseeing your checkout.  So, before leaving I went to Roses, which I remembered from ten years ago has a bathroom in the front of the store.  They have a sign that says, "See Customer Service for Key to Bathroom".   When I got to customer service, there was a woman using a walked with a walking cast on her left leg. She had come for the bathroom key, and customer service didn't have one and knew nothing about one. She was yelling at them because Dollar Tree hadn't let her use the bathroom either.  I told her that the Food Lion across the mall, had a bathroom. She said she couldn't walk as far as that.  She told the employees in the Roses that she was going to urinate in their grass outside. They shrugged.

                       As I drove to the Food Lion, a store that the manager has told me is dying in that location, I noticed signs saying that public urination and defecation is prohibited there.  Welcome to the Third World.  I don't shop much outside my own county any more.  I order the few things I need online and they arrive at our office.  We pick them up and take them to the farm. I have no way of gauging if this is occurring at other locations here in the South. If it is, then it may end shopping as we know it in the US.  Why would women with young children ever take them to such a place ?   Why would anyone go to lunch in a shopping center like this ?   Why would one shop there and incur risk, when they could buy whatever it is online ?