All Good Things

I lugged my Valentine's Day box to school every year like I was transporting a heart for a transplant. Like I was one of those express medical couriers and someone was waiting for it to survive. It all depended on me. But the heart that was in my box was my own and I was ready to give it to someone because even when I was a kid I believed in love more than anything else in this world. 

Some years, the box was covered in aluminum foil. Other years it was wrapped in red or pink construction paper. Other times it was tissue paper, or felt, or cotton balls. The box was sometimes in the shape of a heart, or Cupid, or the Tin Man. It was hardly ever just shaped like a shoebox because that would be too boring and ordinary. That would be like everyone else's box and I never wanted to be like anyone else in that way. I figured the grander my box, the greater the love I would attract. 

I was not born gifted with great athletic prowess. Or with grand acumen from a large brain that excelled in academics. Nor with the kind of motivation and greed that would allow me to accumulate vast quantities of monetary wealth. But I was born with a heart three sizes too large, and with it a desire to love and to be loved. So the holiday to celebrate love was naturally my favorite. And I was never as excited as I was putting my box on my desk and waiting for the Valentine's Day cards I would receive from potential matches. The grade school dating pool. Even when I was 5, I wanted, more than anything, to find her.

 

And I did find her. In first grade. Her name was Haley Frost and in first grade she was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. I don't remember exactly what I thought when I saw her, but I knew she changed my life and she made me believe in love the way snow makes people believe in Christmas and pumpkins make people believe in Halloween. It wasn't just a wish anymore. It was a reality and Haley Frost, whether she wanted it or not, had my heart in the palm of her pretty little hand. 

But love isn't ever that easy, which is a lesson I would have to learn. You can't just give your heart to someone and they will take it. In fact, some people want things less when they're so generously offered them. Haley hardly knew I existed, but every year the box I made was a shrine of my love for her. And each and every year as we progressed through elementary school, my boxes became more elaborate, with the goal of successfully catching her divine attention. We would all sit at our desks and one by one we would go around and pass out cards. Slide them in the slots. Mostly this was done without any sort of celebration or obvious emotion. And very little eye contact if you were a boy. No one wanted anyone to think they loved someone because you would be teased mercilessly or worse if rejected by the person you loved. Love was very complicated in the simple world of elementary school. And I was yet to learn that it wouldn't get any less complicated as I got older. 

I didn't care about anyone else's Valentine's Day cards. I cared about hers. And nothing thrilled me more than when it was Haley's turn to pass out her cards and I sat at my desk waiting for her to get to me. She always stopped for a second in front of my desk and looked my Valentine's Day box over. Then she would grin and slide my card slowly inside and move on. She never grinned at anyone else's box nor did she stop to look at them. And that was all the hope in the world that I had that someday she would love me as I already loved her. 

I was horrified to learn that in junior high they don't celebrate Valentine's Day. Not like they did in elementary, anyway. Junior high, in fact, is a whole other world. The loving and communal feel of elementary school was erased and replaced by the austere efficiency of bells and periods and lockers and study halls. Recess was aborted. And so to were the Valentine's Day boxes and the passing of cards. 

In fairness to junior high, they didn't completely ignore the holiday. They had a dance. It was as though they were telling you that you had seven school years to pick out a Valentine. Now it was time to dance. To progress towards marriage and kids. But I didn't dance and the thought of doing so petrified me. To ask Haley to go and to be rejected. To go alone and ask her to dance and to be turned down. To see her with a date who couldn't possibly love her more than me. It was terrifying. I'd rather have sparred with a lion in the Roman Coliseum. Maybe it was the crate paper banners or the dimmed lights in my imagination. Or the sparks from clashing braces in awkward first kisses. On top of all that, there was the shirt and tie I'd have to wear. The uncomfortable dress shoes and the corsage. I didn't even know what a corsage was. I thought all dances were proms. I didn't know there was a difference in the level of formality. 

So needless to say, I didn't go to any Valentine's dances in junior high and my boycott continued through high school as well. But how I wanted to approach her between periods and ask her to go with me to just one of those dances. Our last names both began with F so our lockers were close to each other. And when she passed, I inhaled, and when she spoke to someone, I listened. There were only a few times when she spoke to me and it always pertained to some class we shared or something about school, past or present. Still, whatever she said was the most important and titillating thing in the universe and it was recorded in me and kept in a sacred vault. 

She was always beautiful, but around Valentine's Day she seemed a little more so. I suppose I could have slipped a card in her locker, in one of those vents they put on them in case a kid gets locked in one. But I guess I knew it was time to put that sort of foolery behind me. I was too old for Valentine's Day cards, or rather, I was too embarrassed not to be. I searched the cards at the department stores as I got older and they didn't seem to be the same as they were when I was a kid. I stood there and looked though them and snarked. They were mawkishly childish.

But then the thought occured to me that it wasn't the cards that had changed. It was me. Maybe junior high served its purpose and that invisible hand finally pushed me through to the other side and on to freshman year of high school where I thought very little of Valentine's Day boxes and my youth in a concerted effort to be mature. I thought of Haley all the same, but she dated football players and other types who were contrary to me in about every way they could be. And learning to play a guitar and songs that reminded me of her and writing poetry for her that she'd never read, seemed like a waste of time one day. And slowly she began to fade from a near constant thought to only an occasional one. 

High school dissolved at graduation. I spoke to her several times senior year, finally getting the courage, but I didn't ask her to senior prom, nor would I have thought her answer to my request to have been favorable. I suppose I was of the mind that I preferred not to have asked over to hearing her say no because it preserved her in some way the way those prehistoric insects are preserved in amber. Realism and maturity might have taken hold of me, but I wanted to keep her hidden somewhere in me because... Just because. I couldn't let the sentimental dream of her go as though she never meant anything at all.

After college, I married and we had two kids. Across their lives, I was happy to help make dozens of Valentine's Day boxes for them with happy thoughts of Haley bouncing around my brain until one day they too got to junior high and no longer needed those boxes. It didn't seem to bother my kids like it bothered me. My wife laughed playfully at me as she always did. She had a beautiful soul and was fabulously lighthearted. I never saw her jealous, though she knew all about Haley, thanks to my mother who prided herself in giving up all my secrets to my wife. She smiled at me and held my hand. She said she was happy I never asked her to dance, and I said that I was too.

 

My wife passed away of cancer when she was 56 and I was 60 and I was on my own. I suppose at the funeral I gave some thought to those boxes again, as my wife was lowered into the earth in a mohagony one. I began to understand that somethings cannot be understood at all. That there are stages to life that we cross over, sometimes reluctantly, and usually unwittingly. But there is one common end that we all inevitably share however rich or poor, however smart or dull, however beautiful or otherwise. It waits for us all. And who knows what from there. Junior high was the first one I remember. Then high school. Then marriage. Kids. Grandkids. Retirement. And death. In many ways death was like the prom to me. I had only vague ideas of what would happen at either event.

I lost her too soon, I futilely complained. I recalled that I never saw her mad. She was the most pleasant person I've ever been around and I was grateful to have gotten to know her, to share children with her, and grandchildren and to have her as a Valentine for almost 40 years. I couldn't have had a better one. I didn't want to date anyone else after she passed. It seemed like it would take away from what we shared. It would cheapen things. Someone else's toothbrush in the toothbrush holder. Their things in her drawers. Someone else's body in our bed. Their head on her pillow. To say I love you to someone else. A substitute. I would be acting and I happen to know that I would be a very terrible actor.

So I spent the next 17 years living alone and sometimes at night when I rolled over and saw the empty place in bed beside me, I cried. But sometimes I smiled and thought of joking and laughing with her after the kids had gone to bed. My emotional were about as predictable as the weather. I kept an unreasonable amount of silverware and dishes for a household of one. I kept her hairbrush on the nightstand and her lipstick in the vanity. They comforted me for a while. I could look at that hairbrush and see the hair that remained and think that not all of her had gone. Some of her stayed. Then I took our RV and toured the other half of the country that we hadn't. I put a sticker on the side for every state we'd been to. Even after she was gone, it was still "we" because that is how it felt. When I planned the trip out in the spring, I always asked her, "Well, darling, where are we going to go now?"

Another one of those stages happened when I was 77. My grandson who is a doctor told me on top of the bad heart I knew I had, I also had dementia. My heart, they said, was enlarged. It beat differently than everyone else's. Abnormally, they said. The doctor must have thought I was a nutcase because when he told me, I smiled at him. Of course, it is enlarged, I grinned. It's always been that way and it has never beat like anyone else's. Nor do I want it to.

As for my dementia, slowly, my grandson said, all the things I knew would fade away and I would not be able to remember my life. There are times now that I forget things I ought to remember. My kids and grandkids came to see me all together and I have no doubt they love me. They asked me to move into a home where people could take care of me. A part of that deal meant to sell my house and most of my things. I think the hardest thing to give up was the RV. Knowing I wouldn't ever be able to say to her come Spring, "Well, darling, where are we going to go now?"

It wasn't a bad place. The retirement home. I didn't feel like my family was stuffing me in some old musty box. Sometimes I look out the window and around the pines and watch the RVs roll away down the road heading towards the interstate and to the caves during camping season. My wife secretly abhorred camping, but she pretended she enjoyed it because I enjoyed it. And she was so good at pretending that I didn't know for years she loathed it until I overheard her talking to her sister on the telephone, saying about as much. That was just who she was. I wrote this all down because I don't want to forget. I think my life is worth remembering and it all started with that Valentine's Day box because it had to start somewhere. These are the beautiful things I remember that no one will ever be able to take away from me. All good things. 

I was like a kindergartner again and the orderly took me around and introduced me to all the residents who would be my friends for the rest of my life, or theirs. I suppose we might not get along, but I would like to think we are too old for that kind of thing. I like to think we have been absolved of the follies of our youth and the drama of the rat race that came afterwards and all that there is now is a desire to live out our remaining years in peace and comfort. Maybe there is some resolution to be had about life that we haven't yet made and that is what we are to do here before we are allowed to go on.

It was indeed like elementary school. There were classes for various things. Crafts. TV time. Naps scheduled. Coloring. Painting. Community meals were served in a cafeteria. Every holiday was celebrated. Even the ones the overly-sensitive types call "offensive" like Columbus Day. And when it was hunting season, they even had the nurses and staff dress up as deer and they gave us dart guns to shoot them. Things were very pleasant and I made some very good friends.

Several months passed and a few folks died and we watched them roll them out. It is only sad if you don't have religion in you because when you do, those are the lucky ones. Reunited with their husbands or wives who passed before them. Everyone has someone on the other side waiting and I sometimes think it is has to be like Grand Central Station but much cleaner. My wife is waiting for me, I have no doubt. I sat there and smiled thinking that was the last line I would write. But then the same orderly who showed me around months before, brought in a new resident. It was Haley. 

I was sitting in my usual chair in the lounge watching Jeopardy at 7 when he brought her through. I didn't know if she would remember me, but as the orderly began to introduce us, she smiled and said hello to me and asked if I remembered her. I said of course and asked her to tea after she settled in. She accepted, happy she knew someone. I suppose I could have been just about anyone in the world, so long as I was a familiar face. But I was happy that she came. I was happy she was here. 

She had a bad heart, she told me, advanced cardiary pulmonary disease. She wasn't supposed to take sugar in her tea, or to live past Christmas, but it was February and here she was stirring two scoops in a cup of Earl Gray. She looked beautiful. Some of us age well. Others become comedic caricatures of who we once were. Faded colorless husks drawn by a drunk man with an unsteady hand. The rest of us are in between. She asked me what was wrong with me. I replied that I forgot. Oh, yeah, an enlarged heart and dementia, I laughed. 

She chuckled. I had every right in the world to make jokes about it. It is how I owned it. I couldn't fear it or else it had already killed me. Haley said her second husband passed several years ago of pneumonia and her first wasn't worth mentioning. And after we talked sufficiently about our spouses, we talked about our kids and grandkids and our town and school and teachers we favored and those we didn't. We were remarkably two very similar people.

We were inseparable for the next couple weeks. We sat in the sunroom and watched the snowfall. The weather prognosticator said it was more snow than we had in thirty some years. Haley had an oxygen tank I helped her with. I wheeled her around. I often thought of what my wife would say if she could see us. She would laugh at me in that playful way and tease me. She would joke that all those Valentine's Day cards must have finally paid off for me. All those late night prayers and dreams and wishes on the heads of presidents tossed into wishing wells. Finally, someone in Heaven got around to satisfying my order with apologies for the delay. That's what my wife would say. I smiled pushing Haley to the arts and craft room thinking about her. I wouldn't put it past my wife that she orchestrated this. Somehow she sent Haley here. It was a gift from my wife who probably petitioned God for the favor. Let him have his fun, she implored. He is a good old man.

There is a way to live without jealousy and my wife embodied it. What a coincidence after all this time that Haley and I ended up in the same nursing home in time to make Valentine's Day arts and crafts for our final Valentine's Day. 

I asked everyone if they wanted to make Valentine's Day boxes like we did as kids. We could make cards and fill each other's boxes with those cards. Everyone seemed happy with the idea and we all got started and in a few days all our boxes were done. We put them on tables outside our room doors and we wheeled or ambled around the morning of Valentine's Day and filled those boxes with cards. I thought my box to be the finest among the lot, but I might be prejudiced in my old age. My box looked like an RV. 

The staff surprised us with a special visit that morning from a local elementary school who all had cards for us. We all gathered in the cafeteria and they were all too happy to sing us a few love songs they had rehearsed. One of which was, "All You Need is Love" by the Beatles. We ate cookies and they gave us hugs and left. I wheeled Haley back to her room and she asked me to stay and talk to her for a while.

"All these years," she smiled. "And it comes down to this. Our last Valentine's Day spent together. I adored you growing up. I thought you were a very handsome boy. And I wanted to tell you so for many, many years, but, well, I was too afraid you would not think the same of me. You see, when I gave you a Valentine's Day card I always wrote, 'Love, Haley!' with a heart instead of a dot on the exclamation point. I didn't do that for all the other boys. Just for you."

I pulled up a chair and sat in front of her. I couldn't believe what she was telling me and while it was sad in a way, it was also funny. And after I told her how I felt about her, we both laughed about it, probably much harder than two old folks like us should laugh. We talked for hours and opened our cards for each other and had cookies and tea and watched the snowfall from the sunroom window.

"Will you be my Valentine?" I asked her there at the window.

"Always," she smiled back grabbing my hand. "We were just unfortunately interrupted by about a half century of life. Every day would have been Valentine's Day with you. Your wife was a lucky woman."

"I tried to tell her," I joked.

"Oh, I think she knew," she smiled.

I gave her a kiss and wheeled her back to her room where she got up, gave me a hug and kiss and then went to bed. All those years waiting, I thought with a grin. I watched her to make sure she made it into bed okay and then I tucked her in. I rubbed her beautiful face and smiled and told her I'd see her in the morning. 

I suppose the worst fate would have been to live on and to slowly forget all the things that ever mattered to me. All the love and the lives I've touched and that have touched me. That is why I wrote it all down. Not so not to forget. So to remember and to remind whoever may read this that I existed. I am writing, in conclusion, a simple plea to that reader. Don't be sad for me. I had a wonderful life and a very happy ending. And wherever I am tomorrow, be certain I am happy to be there.

I read somewhere that we all should tell at least one story about our life so we are not lost forever or forgotten. Maybe someone will read something we wrote and be better for it. Learn something from it. I knew by the way my heart felt that I wouldn't wake up in the morning. It didn't frighten me as I lied down to bed as I had done a million times before. What scared me was to live and forget all the beautiful things I ever knew. I was born to die on Valentine's Day. 

There was some irony in dying of a ruptured heart. My wife is there ready to laugh at me about it. She will tease me and say that my schoolboy crush made my heart explode. But it was her. It was always her. I am happy to go home to see her again. And as we stand there in that Grand Central Station together again, I will ask her, "Well, darling, where are we going to go now?"