I have kept my silence for entirely too long. There is so much that deserves to be said about Doug. I have tried so hard to be respectful of others and their feelings, but the more I hold back, the more I discover just how much people really do want to know.
I have met so many people through the grief process over the past three months. Although we are all feeling similar emotions, I doubt any of us are feeling exactly the same thing. We each knew Doug in our own way and through our own means. Some of us knew him as a classmate or a Navy buddy or that guy on Kesco and/or PointBlank who threw those crazy Fourth of July parties.
The more I talk to people, the more I realize that nobody else really knew Doug the way I knew him. If I believe that everything happens for a reason, I suppose the reason that I am alone in my perspective is so that I may share another side that perhaps nobody else ever really saw.
I know that some of you are reading this and smiling because you know who is on the other side of the keyboard. For those of you who don’t know (or don’t know yet), my name is not important. Please know that what I write has been independently verified several times and I would not ever presume to insinuate anything that I did not believe in my heart to be strictly true.
I was Doug’s first love. I know this not only because he told me many times over the years, but also because I have been told this by several people recently. Sadly, up until recently, I always doubted my significance in Doug’s life. Perhaps that is why I have not spoken out until now. Perhaps not. Either way, it’s a fact.
I have sat quietly through chat after chat and post after post as people have written on and on about story after story. What Doug and I shared cannot be neatly summed up in a few short paragraphs (though I will try).
Doug and I met when we were thirteen years old. I remember the date was June 22, 1990. The place was United Skates in Massapequa. The occasion was a friend’s 15th birthday party.
I remember that I went to the party expecting to stay for a few hours and leave. I didn’t know anyone. I lived in “Melville… Malverne… something with an M” at the time (the other side of the globe from Massapequa) and while I met my friend at camp the year before, I had never had occasion to meet any of her friends until this day.
I spent most of the afternoon sitting by myself or talking to my friend. I remember a boy walked in late. I remember my friend pointed him out and said that she liked him. I also remember thinking “ok, whatever” and not thinking too much of it. Toward the end of the skating session, my friend left to ask her friend to skate. After that, she skated with the boy she liked. When they left the rink, the DJ announced the last song and the boy she liked asked me to skate.
What I remember most is that he was a gentleman. At thirteen years old, he was a gentleman. He patiently waited for me to get up and wobble my way over. He let me go ahead, but stayed right behind me. When we got to the rink, he took my hand and we skated together. At one point my friend and her friend joined us. I remember that they tried to “crack the whip”. One slight problem. I didn’t let go and nearly dislocated this poor guy’s shoulder. I remember that he took it in stride and I can still hear his voice saying with an astonished laugh, “You’re supposed to let go!”
The skate ended and we all went outside to meet up for phase two. My friends mom took us all out for pizza. I remember we stood outside waiting for everyone to return their skates and get themselves together. I remember everyone chattering about what school they were going to be attending next year. I did not have the same frame of reference and so I just stood back and listened.
Eventually, we went to the pizza place. I sat across from my friend and another friend of hers. The boy my friend liked sat next to me. We had front row seats watching my friend open her gifts. One of the most memorable was a T-shirt that was wrapped in a balloon bag. That thing just did NOT want to pop. She must have bounced up and down on that thing for at least twenty minutes. I think eventually someone pulled out a knife and cut the thing open.
After the pizza, we all piled into her mom’s station wagon and went back to her house. We were all hanging around the front yard. Someone brought out a radio and we were all milling around and talking. I don’t remember much of the day until my friend came over and told me that the boy she liked liked me. I didn’t believe her. I had always been somewhat socially awkward and didn’t have many friends. I was used to people playing jokes on me and dismissed this as another one. I remember she insisted that he was interested and I gave her a friendship bracelet that I had to “break the ice”. I remember it was baby blue embroidery floss.
Within five minutes, the boy came over and nervously said, “I guess you already know I like you. I’ve liked you from the minute I first saw you.” I know that it sounds like a line now, but to a thirteen year old heart no sweeter words had ever been spoken. Wouldn’t you know that at that exact moment my parents arrived to take me home. I can still picture my friend throwing my brother (at the time age 7) into a headlock so that we could go around the corner and exchange contact information and hug for the first time. I still have the paper with his on it.
I was moving that summer and I remember I told him that I would give him that information later on. I remember he said, “Wherever you are, I’ll find you.” Again, no great shakes now, but to that same thirteen year old heart….
We saw each other twice (three times if you count the day we met) over the next six weeks before the distance got the better of us. He was the first person to visit me in my new house and I still have the blue tissue paper from the carnations he brought that day. One was red, the other white. Red for love and white for forever. He signed the sixteenth page of my autograph book. I still have that too.
Those six weeks changed my life more than anyone (even he) knows. He was the very first person to take an interest in me. I’m not talking about in a romantic sense. I’m talking about at all. He was the first person that I ever believed truly loved me. The very first. He called every single day and I looked forward to those calls. He was the first person I truly believed that I could count on. I remember he told me once that if I were ever in trouble to call him “no matter the hour, no matter how far, no matter the cost” he would “come and get him”. Those words may not sound like much, but I cannot begin to tell you how many times I had to hold him back over the years.
The bond that Doug and I shared was never broken. I think that is what hurts the most. We each moved on and had our own separate lives. Through it all, we managed to stay close. I remember in one of the last conversations we had, he told me that he was sorry he wasn’t here when things got bad for me. I know that he thought he didn’t keep his promise or that he failed me somehow. I hope he now knows how wrong he was.
Doug gave me a far greater gift than any he could ever have imagined. Remembering him gave me hope in the rough times and knowing that he still loved me through it all made the uncertainties of life somehow more bearable.
Many people remember their first love and smile. I was fortunate to never look back. I looked to the side and he was there remembering every stupid thing that we ever did or ever said from the age of thirteen on. From flying croutons to microwave ovens to bike chains to calculating age in months-years to special songs to answering machine messages and beyond, he remembered them all.
Saying goodbye is never easy. Doug and I said goodbye so many times throughout our eighteen year friendship. There was the goodbye when he went into the Navy. Then there was the goodbye when he got married… and again. Every goodbye felt the same. Every goodbye was goodbye for good until somehow it wasn’t. Perhaps that is why this goodbye is so difficult to accept. Goodbye never meant goodbye. Ever.
At thirteen, goodbye meant eliminating “I love you” from the end of our continually persistent phone calls. At eighteen, goodbye meant tying up the loose ends “just in case”. At twenty-two, goodbye meant wishing each other the best as we each began a new phase in our lives. At twenty-five, goodbye meant a ten-page letter to get out all that remained unsaid after twelve years as we each started yet another new phase in our lives in parallel. At twenty-eight, goodbye meant one final Donuts run. So now, at thirty-one, what does goodbye really mean?
At thirty-one, goodbye meant a final song sung quietly between two hearts accompanying a loving stroke of the arm. It meant one last carnation. It meant wrapping myself up in the memories and shedding a few hundred thousand tears. It meant opening up my heart and feeling the love that continues to shine into my life. It meant letting go of the past.
I still smile when I see or hear something that makes me think of Doug. Instead of wondering whether he is thinking of me, I look upward and share a secret smile over the things that meant so much to us and I feel him with me. In my heart, he is forever that thirteen year old boy who loved me with all his heart. That is a memory that I will forever cherish.
