Amber, Let’s go to New Zealand
My wife died from brain tumors.
I understand your promise.
You will find me confident, fun and positive.
Best to you,
Rick
Dear Rick,
I will admit that I almost chose not to reply. It was the brief mention of your departed wife that caused me to reconsider. I am deeply sorry for your loss. I hope that you loved her, and that you treated her kind, not all men do. Not all men love their wives like they should. I imagine that the regret of death is not just what was lost, but rather what could have been done differently. If we all imagined life as long as a day, knowing tomorrow as a definite end, how would we live? A friend of mine just finished chemo, and her love wasn’t there for her the way she deserves, not with flowers, or dinner, or anything else to celebrate that she survived. I watched her struggle through her disease, as the cancer made her skin blister and scab; I saw her too sick to take care of her two young children, which are not his and so… and so she was mostly alone in her fight, a single mother, no more than a roommate with a title, girlfriend. “I love you,” he says.
She got fired from her job not even two weeks after treatment; employment she was devoted to, even though her boss is a dick. He made comments about her appearance, like there was something she could do about losing her hair. My friend never missed a day of work, never called out once, when we all know she could have. Cancer is pretty big excuse to be absent. She could have checked out in a number of ways, but she chose to face her battle head on like a warrior. She wouldn’t even take medicine for her nausea, wanting to win by her own right, instead of finding hero by pill. It was a bitter one she swallowed when she got let go. She cried for the better of the day, temporarily broken, until she remembered how far she had come. This girl has been out there running races with me. We would run before treatment, and when she was too sick we walked.
Tara Rene Jones spent nearly the entire afternoon of her last day of chemo listening to me cry over heartbreak. I didn’t bring her flowers either. I stopped into the flower shop because I wanted single roses. They had been on sale a week prior, three dollars a stem. I thought I could buy six or so, to give to her favorite nurses in celebration of the day, her last day of treatment. Tara finds complete bliss in taking care of everyone else. The flowers were for that purpose, until the lady in the shop failed to haggle. “Six dollars a stem,” she said flatly, not even bothering to engage with me, the only customer in her small business. “You must be smoking crack lady!” I kept the comment to myself though it was appropriate, even the paint was crackling. I thought of the corporate giant not even a block up the road; the one that would give me a dozen stems, for twelve. They would be so lovely, a wonderful gift, if I hadn’t wasted time in her store. I went there to support her small business, above the giants, and she gave me nothing of her time, or the attention to even ask, “How may I help you?” I left without flowers, my inspiration is enough.
My eyes twinkled, as I listened to my friend Tara Rene Jones find new inspiration from her firing, “Amber, I want to do what you are doing now. You inspired me to reach out to help. I spoke to my uncle. He is a business man, and you two are so much a like that it makes my head hurt. I don’t want to go back to work at some nine to five, just to pay the bills. I want to do something that makes a difference in the world. I am starting a facebook page, “Second Chance Warriors”. The page is the beginning of a foundation I would like to start.
I replied, as her accusation. “I am so glad Tara! Yes! You can do this, and I want to help you. How are you going to fund it? How do you intend to make a living? I have been writing now for nearly two years, without pay. Yes, I help. Yes, I inspire. Yes, I make a difference, but at the end of the day, you have to eat. You have two kids. I did the math on how much money I would have made at twenty dollars an hour; how much money I would have made if my blog was generating revenue at that pay grade by the hours I have invested. I would have made $36,000, which is on the under belly of the poverty line, but it still would have been something. I wrote without strategy, and came back with zero, which was fine because I could afford it. I was able to write my blog because my house has been in foreclosure. I had time to be there for each round of your chemo because I had a free place to stay; the loss of everything was my funding. My time is up. I have to move, and I already have bills to pay. It doesn’t mean that I am stopping, or giving up. It means that I need to consider all ventures business. My immediate focus being placed on the highest potential for yield. You can have your dreams Tara, but they need to generate if you want action. If you want to change the world, you need to see yourself as monetary success. You need to have more, to feed more. If you do not have enough, nor will they. How can I help you?”
How may I help you Rick? You wrote to me so briefly, mentioning three things of interest, FUN, CONFIDENT, AND POSITIVE, without any detail as to why I should care. Except you said it all in that one line….
I UNDERSTAND YOUR PROMISE?
Amber, Let’s go to New Zealand
My wife died from brain tumors. I understand your promise.
You will find me confident, fun and positive.
Best to you,
Rick
Describe your perfect date, you read my profile on MILLIONAIRE MATCH. The one I keep up for the sake of imagining impossible things. Love is an impossible thing, I don’t expect to find it online. That is not what I am looking for, though I do hope it finds me someday. I wonder? Did you really understand the story? There is one, you know. You are already a part of it by reading that part of my profile…
At first I wasn’t sure what my perfect date would be. I couldn’t describe it because I wasn’t exactly sure how big I was allowed to dream. For example, I would like to jump out of an airplane in New Zealand. It is on bucket list because I promised a dying friend. I told him that I would fly there to make him smile because skydiving was his favorite thing in life, and the only thing that ever made him smile. My friend Ink (his real name was Dean) did not smile. He didn’t have that kind of life. He was given up to foster care as an infant because single moms are more than frowned upon where he is from. She thought he would have a better life without her, so she gave him up. Except no one else wanted him either, a family never came. He listed out the horror of his misplacement crudely, which was his way. Ink was not nice to me, but Dean would have been. Ink was a man tatted up from the base of his trunk to his head, his entire being a scribble of tragic headlines.
“Man, left shot and bleeding on hospital steps.”
“The Fourteen Homes of Homeless: The truth about Foster Care”
“Addiction: Inherent or Systemic? A Case Study from A Botanist Perspective”
“Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankle’s Hope, and a Faceless Man.”
Ink was the body of that tattoo, the slew of the slum, the bottom of the feed. The lot that snarled and tore, biting and scratching, to bleed the beast of humanity. This is what happens when you are born not wanted. How is that abortion looking to you now? He had a face that couldn’t melt. He had a heart that wanted, but was caged. He died with two friends, both cons, women who saw something in him that the world could not. There were the only two people at his funeral, mother and daughter. Rose Smart knew what I knew, Dean was someone’s child before he passed. He deserved a life with that smile. I wanted to fly to New Zealand to make him smile before he died. I was going to jump out of a plane on his behalf even though I abhor flying and all high places, but I didn’t make it. He died of a brain tumor before I could get my passport…
I might fall in love in with a man who helps me keep my promise… Maybe. That is the optimal word Maybe. How much effort should be put into that??
Reality has a way of keeping us grounded doesn’t it? Mine was a romantic notion given the circumstances. I had never even met Ink in person. I ‘met’ him on bodybuilding.com. We all know those people aren’t real ;) I never even saw his face. For all I knew he was lying, except I knew he wasn’t. His story became real months after his death. Ms. Smart’s daughter emailed me the photo because her mother wasn’t able to, “She went back to prison…”
New Zealand would be a great way to start my Happily Ever After, but I can’t imagine a man taking me to New Zealand over “maybe”. Men don’t even like to buy flowers anymore. I had a man ask me out just last week and he admitted that he doesn’t put much effort into his first dates because he learned from past experience that the flowers didn’t get him anywhere, “There really is not much point until later. I think casual is the best approach, coffee or perhaps a drink. Nothing fancy.”
I believe that gifts should be given for the sake of giving, not because something is expected in return.
I buy people flowers as often as I can. I buy them because they make people smile, and it is a thoughtful gesture. I bring them to every dinner party I am invited to, as a gift to the host. “Thank you for your invitation. I am flattered that you thought of me…..”
If you fly me to New Zealand, I will buy you flowers. Thank you. You will be a chapter in my book.
This reply is four pages of that novel. I have been writing for some time, and Ink did in fact die from a brain tumor. So did my therapist, Lynn Damiano. I found out she passed away just recently, on my drive to Spokane, though she died sometime ago. It has been close to two years since she passed. She died about a month after I couldn’t afford to see her anymore, but not before she told me that I have been thinking like a poor person. My therapist was concerned about my financial strategy, in direct relationship to my life’s choices. She was genius, and also dying the whole time. I thought the building smelled like death because it was old. I didn’t realize that I was sitting so close to it. I found out she died only a week back. I was speaking to my favorite college professor, mentor, friend, and also client. Cecelia lost her husband to cancer just barely two years ago. He died a slow and painful death, pancreatic. It was the rawest hurt to know her suffering, and I didn’t reach out much because I had no words, or place. Far removed, but in it still. She expressed great guilt for having fallen in love only two years after his parting, and surprise. “It was not intentional,” she was apologetic, at the same time empowered. Hearing her voice was like laying underneath a sky filled with fireworks, “We went to Bora Bora Amber, I have been traveling everywhere…..”
You can fly me to New Zealand Rick, but I will not fall in love with you the way she did with him. My heart is elsewhere, in no right position for love, not romantic love anyway, or sexual. I already have a lover, and I prefer one only. There will be no temptation. I would make it more, but he has requested that I not. I am THAT GIRL, the one he is “just not that into,” even less than, “Yes, I am seeing someone, but it’s nothing serious.” I met that guy one night at dinner, a 6’2 German; he had yellow teeth. I was not interested.
I am not really interested in what men want from me right now. That is what I told the man I made my lover. “I chose you, and it’s pretty f*cking simple. Do you like spending time with me? Do you like having sex with me? If your answer is Yes, then consider this next question, Do you really want me to go away because I can. Yet, another positive outcome, I can leave if it makes you happy. The door is open. I didn’t want to make you promises anyway; I could be going to New Zealand.”
Rick, New Zealand would be am amazing trip to take, but I am not available the way you would like. If we were to go on that trip the relationship would be public and platonic, glorious albeit is friendship. I would write your love story, that of you and your wife. This book is a collection of LOVE, the greatest love story ever written.
If we go to New Zealand, I will tell you about a woman you should meet. I met her in Spokane, while visiting a client. She recently lost her sister to cancer, and became a widow by the loss of her best friend. Holly is beyond beautiful, an elegant grace, near intimidation. She is closer to your age, and should be. You should remember the relevant times; there is a culture.
It is Easter and I have spent near the day writing you this reply. I doubt that much will come of it, except the pages of my book are growing as they must. I am spending the day in quiet solitude. My hands have again taken to pen. I am writing him on paper, “I don’t really like you anyway letters,” because we don’t have anything near love or even friendship. I would describe it more like an orbit; round and round until one or both get dizzy, sick, and ask to be let off. I saw him for the first time in a month, a few days back. We met for coffee confirming what we both know; there is something without label. I am going to go for a run along the Western Chehalis Trail, stopping along the river to write him. People think that my entire life is public, and I promise that it can’t be. All life is edited for protection, and my adventures will be that discretion. It would be cool as hell if someone got wind of my story and decided to take me places just to see me GO. Most men have and agenda attached to their penis, so I bite it off in Bobbit Fashion. That position is taken. Are you interested in the revision I am writing?
NEW ZEALAND WILL BE A CHAPTER.
The questions:
Who
When
How
If
Could
Should
Happy Easter Rick. Life is a beautiful thing.
Much Love and Many Blessings,
Amber Garibay
