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<\/p>\nWe went out last night to celebrate my mom’s birthday in what has become a new tradition – dress like my mom – glamorously. I wore the fox stole my mother in law gave me along with mom’s jewelry that she gave me and got all dolled up in her honor – she was a snazzy dresser. Happy Birthday Mom!<\/p>\n
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We then came home to learn that the first love of my life is on his deathbed and might not make it till the end of this week. I can remember him taking his nitroglycerin pills when I was only 19 years old. I met him because I was staying at my brother’s apartment and he had a date with my brother’s dear friend and neighbor (who sadly died in a car crash a few years ago). I fell in love with him at first sight – I was 13 and he was 29.<\/p>\n
He was 6′ 8″ and his favorite come back to anyone who asked him if he played basketball was whether they were a jockey. He had Nordic good looks and was a freak of sorts – a genius, an alcoholic, a lover. After he cheated on me so many times I couldn’t count the times on my two hands, I gave up trying. And they were always dramatic times – he slept with my boss after meeting her one night with me, he left the bar with another woman while I was in the bathroom (the bartender took me home instead – Linda), he would sit at Cosmos and wait for me to come home when I lived in the shotgun on Burgundy Street in the French Quarter. He moved into the lavish apartments on Esplanade and conducted business by the pool. I threw another woman’s clothes over the balcony after finding her in bed with him. She was my co-worker and lit my cigarette with matches from the bar he had been at the night before – it tipped me off. He made millions. He owned hotels with my brother and my brother in law. He was bohemian, a high roller, a lush, and a cheat.<\/p>\n
Then he had a nervous breakdown and committed himself to an institution.<\/p>\n
For 20 years afterwards, I dreamed about him. I went to work for my brother and he came to work with my brother again. He was married for the third time, with a new baby, and he talked to me as if we were still lovers – it was disconcerting because my heart still skipped a beat when he walked in the room. He told me tales about how if we were together I would have to let him also have a darker woman in his life. I told him he was absurd and there was no “we” anymore and never would be. I was married to my first husband at that time.<\/p>\n
I had married my friend who had been my confidant when he first went into the mental hospital. I had decided to never love like that again.<\/p>\n
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