‘JK’ was born in Eastern Texas - ‘where there are trees and orchards’. From there she moved down to Corpus Christie … showed me photographs of the Ocean and Beaches that she could step out to from the restaurant she worked in.
Gorgeous, what took you there from East Texas?
“My boyfriend.”
“I have moved a lot, so when he suggested it, I was hesitant, but he pushed, he had a great opportunity and said that when we moved, we wouldn’t be doing the lifting, moving and driving, we were going to pay someone else to do all that. Nobody had ever said something like that to me before. How could I refuse?”
So great boyfriend, great career opportunity, beautiful new place and town to live in …
.. and yes, she had moved again. Away from the Ocean and Beach. Away from her new home. Leaving behind her new life and was now working in a very different kind of place, in a very different part of Texas.
Turns out she wasn’t even with her boyfriend anymore.
He was everything she could have wanted, but it wasn’t to be.
It was Thanksgiving. She and the children were at her mothers waiting for him to join them. She called. No answer. Eventually, she got word.
He was just 37 when he had his heart attack and died. Thirty Seven. Leaving behind her, her ten year old and his two young teenagers.
She was worried that she might not see his children anymore. They had gone back to ‘their family’, she meanwhile has headed north to her family, the only ‘close’ people she had left in the world. But essentially, she was still alone and all after being shown the possibility of a brighter new future, only to have the rug whipped out from under her. In her mind, she had nothing left.
She met another woman at her new place of work. Instant connection. ‘Two sisters from different misters’. Support immediately given. Unconditionally. They have been inseparable for nearly a year. Just a month ago, they were driving in the city and as she looked out through the car window, the cloud lifted. In her words, it was nothing short of an epiphany. As she looked at the view, truly seeing for the first time she knew at that moment it was time. Time to live again.
She still misses her partner and his children, the ocean, the beach, the life that he had promised and that they had started, but she is getting through it thanks to her ‘BFF’ - a true friend without who she couldn’t have done any of this.
I met her friend. As always, never far away, even at work.
Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
John F. Kennedy