Death (Why I Died)

She was (is) the most beautiful woman I had ever known. If I write "was", it would seem as if she is no more. But she still is

To write of a woman in regards to love, is most difficult. Each man has his own definition, his own portrait of perfection. His own avatar of the one that holds his heart in her hands forever

She

We met online in a video game in 2009. To write of this is not so difficult to understand, such occurrences are commonplace now. And were fairly so then.

But it was at once both common, and not so. The meeting was common. She, not so.

I could write 100,000 words just to describe her right hand. Those fingers, the nails, always perfect and painted. Colors to match these shoes or that eyeliner. The way she would wiggle them in just the right way, and her cat would come running to be scratched.

Her wit, her humor, her class. Well traveled, mature, intelligent. She taught me of so many things. Girl things. How to care for her. How to listen to her. Her patience with me was at times as Job .. and other times .. as a person can be, short and agonizing

She is all that I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed a woman would, and should, and could be. I adored her very presence in my life.

She was .538 of my age. Crazy right?, that such numbers would be used to describe such a one? Numbers are numbers and love is love. The problem with such numbers is that one had already raised 3 kids, and another sought (with every hormone in her body) to bear her own.

I love kids. Babies, toddlers, adolescents, teenagers. The most beautiful and amazing thing I have ever survived, was having three children. AND .. I wanted MORE! .. only this time, with the RIGHT woman. A good woman. A woman that wanted to be a mother. Not one that just used children as a means to a financial end.

For 3-1/2 years, as my mid 50's progressed, I knew we would be exactly as I dreamed we could be. After all, May-December romances were everywhere.

Then we met in real life & spent 16 days together. And it was! How I wanted it soooo! As did she. I proposed over Skype, but I knew the real thing would require a ring and a face to face proposal. So every ounce of me went into overdrive to make it happen. I was reborn. A second life awaited me 2,600 miles away.

 She told me once, as we talked intimately, how love stories are all tragedies. I didn't comprehend at the time what this meant in truth. Romeo & Juliet. Tristan & Isolde. Sarah Conner & Kyle Reese.

Each day I walk this life, I see the attempts of couples, trying to "love" but mostly just recreating.

The relationship will break down. Anger and malice will flourish due to unrealized expectations on both sides. And the children will suffer. They will suffer the absence of dad, because mom will make it so.

They will suffer the moronic and idiotic rulings handed out by the family courts. Mom will hold all the power, and dad will be nothing more than a slave. His only purpose in the life of the children, to pour as much money into the "Clearinghouse" as it is humanly possible to do so.

Mom will spend years, mentally, emotionally (and occasionally, physically) abusing the children. Because she did not get from the man, what she wanted. SO .. she will make him PAY!! Pay with every cell in his body, enforced by said system.

My one true love and I talked once, about the weight I bore from this ill decided marriage.

She promised me she would never treat me as the previous did. And .. I believed her.

She was the one, most beautiful. And I knew what she said was true. I wanted my rebirth, my second chance. I wanted to be 30 again, to conceive and raise children, with a true love this time. As is often expressed, I was willing to sell my soul to be with her.

Sadly, as the truth of reality struck .. I wasn't 30. I wasn't 40. Even for others of my life span, I could barely pass for 50. The list of conditions I bore in this body was long. Many transmittable by genetics and DNA, and others caused by the poor decisions of my youth.

I could not allow our children to (potentially) suffer the effects of my DNA. And even more so, to be 70 years old, barely able to walk, to watch my children graduate from 6th grade (age 10) with all of his/her classmates asking: "is that your grandpa?" and them replying: "No, that's my daddy". The replay of a conversion I witnessed between my daughter and a classmate in 2005.

She was all there ever was, and could be, but I was the weakest link.

Friends from work cautioned me. A dad needs to be there for his kids. Whether it was throwing a football in the yard, cheering them on at the soccer game. Or carrying their dead tired, sleeping body, from the car to their bed as God's peace rested on their tiny frame.

These were the "dad" things I was barely capable of doing before conception. After birth, the kids would grow bigger and stronger, I would grow weaker. And at 53, by the time the kids graduated high school, I would most likely be wheel chair bound. A husk. A proud and happy husk, but a diminished shell that had minimal physical influence on my new family.

Shortly after graduation, the life insurance policy would help ensure they were all financially capable of maintaining forward momentum in life. But they would, for some time, fly the missing man formation at the dinner table.

This is no way for a family to be.

I didn't have the physicality of Mel Gibson, Chelsea Grammar, Steven Tyler ... et al

Making love is the easy part. Creating children is the wonderful part. Getting out of bed at 2:00 a.m. to hold and comfort a colicy child is the hard part. The part that is real, and daily, and unavoidable.

To this moment, I love her with all that I am. I weep often of the lost love. Past is past, she is gone.

There is comfort knowing that she has one that is closer to her age. Assuming that a different roll of the genetics dice should give her, and her offspring a chance at a better future.

Believing that she is better off without me.