With the exception of a side trip to the country, it was as if my heart had fully expected events to unfold exactly the way they had that Sunday afternoon in that Owen Sound Tim Hortons. This time, however, on the long series of flights home, I wasn’t fighting emotional turmoil.
Griselda comforted Brain and he her. For the first time in weeks, my heart and mind seemed to be working together successfully managing my sadness. Brain accepted the fact that we did not come away with any further understanding of Jonny’s unwillingness to cut all ties between us and, likewise, Griselda accepted that there was no indication he wished to further pursue a relationship.
“She’s right,” my logical mind said to me, “there is something else there besides his protestations that we represent a threat to his future well-being. We just haven’t figured out what it is.”
I didn’t have a great deal of time to agonize or overthink the sad state of my love life. Long before meeting Jonny, I had planned on attending a mid October, small, informal gathering of my fellow classmates from Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia.
The plan was to fly to Savannah, Georgia, spend a few days with my editor and good friend Ken and his husband Mark
The plan was to fly to Savannah, Georgia, spend a few days with my editor and good friend Ken and his husband Mark, rent a car, and drive to Milledgeville over the weekend for the reunion before returning to Savannah and taking a flight back to Palm Springs.
After my now usual predawn hike to Palm Springs International Airport, I boarded the first of my three flights to Savannah. I was grateful to be making the first leg of the trip on what I called a real passenger jet, a Boeing 737.
Just moments after leveling off at cruising altitude I noticed a flurry of activity towards the rear of the plane. A passenger had been taken ill and a call went out for a doctor or anyone with medical or first aid experience.
Would you believe it, out of approximately 145 passengers there was only an administrative RN and an former ambulance attendant/first aid specialist on that flight. Forty years earlier, before the days of well-trained EMTs with all their wondrous equipment, I was first an ambulance attendant and then, after a few weeks training, a certified first aid specialist.
While I calmed the young woman experiencing severe chest pains, the nurse informed the cabin crew that we needed to land immediately, which we did a short time later in Phoenix, Arizona.
…seeing Savannah for the first time – The Mercer Williams House of “Midnight In The Garden of Good And Evil” fame
It was nearly midnight by the time I was finally greeted by Ken after having spent an unscheduled hour in Phoenix and nearly four hours, once again in Dallas, as American Airlines struggled to reschedule my itinerary.
I had with me the first chapters of God Can Wait, which both Kenneth and I deemed a success after Mark, Kenneth’s husband (not known to be an avid reader), completed reading all 14 of them in one sitting.
Talking about “the book” with Ken, seeing Savannah for the first time with him and Mark as my guides, in addition to all the drama associated with the flight to Georgia had kept my mind fairly well occupied. That changed after picking up my rental car and heading west toward Milledgeville.
Traveling through the swampy coastal lowlands up through the mid-Georgia Piedmont plains with nothing on the radio but Country and Western music, Rush Limbaugh and Christian radio to listen to, I had plenty of time on the road alone with my thoughts.
Seeing the changes forty years had brought to my old school and the small town of Milledgeville…
Seeing the changes forty years had brought to my old school and the small town of Milledgeville served as a partial distraction as did the day I spent swapping stories over glasses of wine with my former classmates, but not enough to keep me from thinking about Jonny.
Sunday morning arrived and it was time to return to Savannah. Over breakfast at a local diner, I used my iPhone to check my email and Facebook notifications. There, just as there had been for the preceding four Sundays in a row, was an item telling me someone I’d never heard of had liked and shared one of my photos. Not just any photo but the shirtless one of Jonny standing in front of my car taking in the sun at Joshua Tree National Park.
“Will this never end?” I asked Brain.
“It does seem to be defying coincidence,” he responded.
I turned to ask Griselda what she thought of all these coincidences only to find her reviewing images as well.
Griselda wasn’t looking at images from Jon’s Palm Springs visit, but rather from our time together in Toronto, and she was lingering over one image in particular; the picture I’d taken of a puffy, bleary eyed Jonny at breakfast that Sunday morning after the allergy attack he’d had the night before.
“There’s something familiar about that image,” Brain said, “and not just because we were making fun of him that morning.”
He was right. Something about that image of Jonny sitting there at the table rubbing his red swollen eyes struck a chord with me as well. This thought bugged me the rest of the morning as I made my way back to Savannah, so much so that I barely said hello to Ken and Mark before sequestering myself in their guest room with my laptop.
It took several minutes of scrolling through my photo library before I found it–it being the photo that the picture of a puffy-faced Jon most reminded me of.
It was the selfie I’d taken the night of my emotional breakdown; haggard, red faced and eyes swollen. It was remarkably similar to the picture I’d snapped of Jonny that Sunday morning in Toronto.
My jaw dropped.
“It wasn’t an allergy attack,” Brain and I said in amazement staring each other in the face.
“He’d been crying too…” Brain said.
“The night before lying in bed with me,” I added, “as if he was anguishing over what he was about to tell me the next morning.”
Looking all the more like my late sister Vanessa should, were she alive, Griselda had the warmest, smile I think I’d ever seen on her face.
“This means. This means…” I struggled to complete a thought.
“You’re almost there,” Griselda said patiently.
“This isn’t about us” Brain said confidently. “We’ve only been talking with his logical mind. He’s been hurt before and his brain is doing everything it can to keep that from happening again.”
“Finally,” Griselda beamed joyously.
“This means the texts, the little jokes, the likes and compliments…,” I said haltingly before concluding, “they’re his heart’s way of sneaking around that logical defense. His heart is determined to follow its desire.”
“Nevertheless,” Brain said. “As lovely as this idea is, he has never told you what his feelings toward us are.”
“Are you absolutely sure of that?” Griselda asked before reminding us of a line in one of the texts Jonny sent me after the breakdown.
“No, it can’t be,” Brain said after rereading the message. “He’s just… He’s an engineering student not an English major. It’s just improper usage; clearly he meant it to be something else.”
“Perhaps,” Griselda said as I pondered Jonny’s words.
“Oh my God,” I said in astonishment as I finally realized what Griselda had meant every time she said, he’s just like us. “It’s from his heart, outmaneuvering his mind, speaking directly to you, heart to heart.”
Griselda smiled and nodded.
“I never thought it was real,” I said to my heart and mind, “I always thought it was just in movies and books but this means it’s… this means it’s true…”
“Love,” Brain said on my behalf as we all read Jonny’s words.
I simply can not allow myself to invest into that again, even for someone I love…
Edited by
Kenneth Larsen
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