I’m Watching Glee

I’m watching Glee and transported back fifty years plus

To the days that she and I were in choir together.

For three years starting our senior year when I used to watch

Her climb a couple of steps of the riser to her seat

And I was mesmerized by her profile from the rear, and ending

When she unceremoniously dumped me and

Continued dating a Harvard guy doing graduate work in physics at

The University of Illinois and I was still in my second

Year of life in the local community college, we were in love.

During the next fifty plus years, I had an unbelievable love affair

And marriage of twenty-six years to the mother of my two children

And my soul mate even though we fought like

Cats and dogs (She was the cat and I was always the dog.)

And never really grew up in relation to each other.

She died one day, in one day, while we vacationed for the first

Time without the kids after that quarter of a century plus.

Two years, much counseling, prayer and running hard five miles

Six days a week later, I married a beautiful young widow

Who started jogging with me.  We jogged together this morning

With our third Chocolate Lab on the trails near our

Home along the shores of Lake Michigan.  We’ve been jogging,

Kayaking, cycling, backpacking, tent camping together

For sixteen plus years of marital bliss (at least from my

Perspective), and yet, when I got the news

Through an internet search, I went into this funk from which I still

Have to emerge. I don’t mean I love her in that

Splendor in the Grass adolescent way and yearn to recapture that

Which is long gone.  She had been an intimate part of my life

Intensely in an intense, tumultuous time and probably with not a lot of

Maturity. We hadn’t spoken in all those years and

To be perfectly honest I was hoping to see her at our 50^th class reunion to acknowledge

The significance of that experience on my life. But I can’t.  She died, divorced I

Think, alone, for all I know, or maybe with her two kids two thousand plus miles from what

Had been her home of cancer at 64. I hate it when people I know die what I consider

Prematurely, suddenly or without my knowledge or approval/never (They need my approval

To die?) approval only to find it out In a Google search.

They’re cheated; I’m cheated. We’re all cheated. A wake-up call.

I look at my wife, love her more than ever and, yes, tell her.

I hold her close and the dog nibbles at my fingers, nudges between

Us and whines and barks his disapproval.  He wants her

For himself.  Can you blame him? He is spontaneous; affectionate, no holds barred,

Effusive with his love. I may be a dog but I should be more like

That Chocolate dog.