@Mame,
Mame wrote:
I'm so glad this venue exists. Losing someone dear to you is always going to be tough but having this community grieving, celebrating, remembering, sharing has got to go some distance to making one feel not so alone in their grief. Thank heavens for that. It's like a cyber-wake. {{group hug}}
I have nobody in real life I can talk about this with...they don't get it at all.
I like and maintain the separation of worlds, but now would be a great time to have a flesh friend who understood.
(Group hug)
@JPB,
He knew how old she was.
(And I'd got her photo)
Since his daughter didn't want to have any contact with him, he didn't respond.
@Walter Hinteler,
How sad! They never will know what an interesting, lovable, and kind man he was just because of a revengeful ex-wife. How terribly sad that is!
@msolga,
Wow, this is a little freaky - I planted a whole planter of petunias of that exact shade, the same day he died.
Cycloptichorn
@CalamityJane,
I don't know if this ex-wife is just revengeful or if that is the reason.
She's full of prejudices and fixed opinions, for sure.
What a comfort it is to me -- and Diane and all of us, I suspect -- to read these remarks. And those photos from SF in 2005 brought back their own delightful memories.
I would pleased and honored to join a gathering in ALQ to reminisce about Bob. Fall would be a preference but I'll be there whenever it is scheduled.
@blatham and Lolaessence: Relocating to Austin! How delightful to be able to see y'all again when you get settled. @farmerman : Pasty white. Come to ALQ and I'll tell you how I acquired the nick.
I liked old Dys. He had a way about him.
Maybe I should start with the story of Bob and Diane right here in Albuquerque in 2003 where there was the first gathering of a2kers.
I knew Bob from a2k but he had no idea I existed until we met in Denver for the drive down to ABQ.
We talked constantly, realizing that we had all the important things in common. By the time we arrived in Albuquerque, I was madly in love. I was also sixty years old, I was in a thirty four year marriage and had always be faithful, but all that flew out the window for me.
I began the relationship. I had to lead a willing Bob down the primrose path and there was no end after that. It was ridiculous that, at sixty, I felt like I had a letter "A" burned on my forehead. I think I did a lot of blushing. Jane and Bernie were hilarious and cheered us on. And yes, there were memories of being on top of the Sandia Mountains that shall always remain blurry and funny beyond belief.
I wanted to stay in Denver to be with Bob, but he wisely urged me to go home for the summer to really think things through. It was one of the longest and hardest summers I've ever lived through.
Finally, that September, I told my ex husband that I was leaving him. I packed up and drove to Denver and our life together was something beyond description.
We moved to Albuquerque because the cost of living here is far less than in Colorado.
Our love for each other has been something that we both cherished and that we both knew would last forever. We were the luckiest people in the world. I know that I am still one of the luckiest people in the world, because our love is still alive.
I just don' t know what I'll do without my cowboy. All I know to do is continue to love him and to miss him with all my soul.
Diane, Thanks for sharing that. And I'm remembering the longest hardest summer you ever lived through.
@Diane,
I recall yawl getting together, but had no idea of the struggle it took to make it happen.
Oh, wow. I was just reading back through my PMs from Bob, and I found something extraordinary. These were the last words he wrote to me, about 3 weeks ago. How prophetic.
"...hopefully I won't be remembered on a2k as 'that cranky old guy.' Maybe something like, "Dys, yeah I remember him, he was kinda interesting."
@Eva,
that's so cool...that's how I remember him.
In the old days we'd chatter away about music and stuff but then we sort of drifted apart. Oh well...that stuff happens.
@Eva,
He was kind of interesting, in an old guy, cranky kind of way. Much more interesting and less cranky in person, I might add. Bob actually considered other viewpoints.
The day I met Bob, I was dazzled right away. I knew I had come to the right place. I never met with such acceptance and fellowship any other time in my life. The little group with him enhanced the aura. Sad that I never got a chance to spend more time there.
@edgarblythe,
The thread Bob started about that visit, EdgarB:
http://able2know.org/topic/134318-1
@ossobuco,
I read that thread yesterday, osso.
@edgarblythe,
I forgot there was a spat in it when I posted the link, but it was nice to read how much Bob enjoyed meeting you.
@ossobuco,
Friends can have spats too. I'm sure that is well behind everybody.
