first love

my first love died this year. i would have missed it except that my daddy reads the obituary every day. he died suddenly of a heart attack. it seemed so weird - this person i thought i would love forever (doesn't everyone feel that way at their first break-up)lived most of his life without me ever knowing anything more about him.

our last conversation that i remember was when i was 16. he had dropped out of clemson after one semester... going off to college being the reason he had dropped me...and was thinking about joining the army... wondering if there was a reason not to. i didn't give him one. i was already in another relationship. he was not going to get a chance to hurt me again.

i was 13 when i met wayne. he was pretending to be the cousin of my sister's boyfriend... from abeleen, texas. he had to own up to the truth later when he really wanted to date me. i was way too young. we went out with my sister and her boyfriend once or twice. he was already 17. i was way over my head. so that was it for a while. but he came back when i was 14. supposedly i was old enough to really date then. what were my parents thinking!?!?!

i wanted to break up after three months. i had a crush on another boy... my mother and sister talked me out of it. so instead of breaking his heart, he broke mine.

but we had a lot of fun together. we went to plays back when nobody went to plays. we saw all the latest movies. he took me out to dinner at least once a weekend. we did football games back when i cared about football. we spent almost every sunday in the mountains hiking. he was sure that he was going to change the world, and i thought i had a pretty good shot at it myself. we were neither of us political but we were both immensely idealistic.

he wasn't religious in the least that i knew about, and i was at church like clockwork and had my whole life saturated in religion. so i found it strange to discover that he spent his whole life involved in a prayer ministry. and i wonder how much of the boy i knew was in the man who spent his life traveling the world with a wife and two daughters "saving the world". i think it was a part of him that made me love him, the part who wanted to change the world, the part that always envisioned a great life.

the hurt of our breakup left me years ago, but the memories of our good times together remain. i was sorry to know that his life had ended, early. but i feel like that optimistic, imaginative boy i knew had a life he was happy with, and that gives me a real sense of satisfaction.

my son is grieving over his first love, a relationship much different from my own first love... longer, begun at an older age, more complicated, and filled with a hope to beat the odds and get it right the first time... like a few do. it doesn't look good right now, but who am i to say. there is something to be said for the absence of scars from other relationships.. we carry them with us. i will not make a judgment on what is right or wrong for him.

but what i hope most is that like my oldest daughter, they can find a friendship that lasts past the romance if the romance is not to be, that he doesn't read in the paper about a person who meant so much to him who is now a stranger. because love is never wasted and love never dies... it morphs... it changes intensity... but those we love and who love us are always with us.

it is important to me that wayne had a good life.. a wife and two daughters, a life that was fulfilling... it is important because i loved him... with a 14 year old love...immature, unrealistic, and nevertheless real.

rest in peace, wayne, we were friends along with everything else.