Awash in Memories

We had a family emergency late last week. My mom fell and broke her left hip. Between that event, the approach of Christmas holidays, and finishing up year end tasks at work so I can take the last week of the year off, I really didn’t expect to have a blog out this week.

Yet, with all of that, a memory followed by all the emotion that is tied to it washed over me on my way in this morning. I haven’t been listening to podcasts or audio books for several days. I’ve been listening to holiday music or just surfing my satellite radio as I make my trek into work every morning. This morning it was John Denver singing Annie’s Song that tripped that switch in my brain and opened up a door that has been shut for awhile

Once again, my first husband and first love’s memory washed over me. There were times he loved to sit in the bathroom and play his guitar. I guess it was the acoustics. So when John Denver started singing Annie’s Song, an image flashed across my mind of him sitting on the tide of the tub, strumming his guitar and him declaring to me “This one’s for you!”

As I listened to the song on the radio, I couldn’t help buy wonder……..what happened to that guy. I’m not referring to the actual, physical person. I know what happened to him. The same sad story of many people or their own loved ones. Drug addiction picked him up, changed him, and carried him away to the land of the lost.

But I wonder what happened to that guy? The guy who loved me. The guy who sang songs to me and even wrote songs for me. What happened to the little boy who sat upstairs in his room and fished from the koi pond. How did his mother know? She saw the fish being reeled up past the downstairs windows.

That boy, that man was whisked away. The dreams of his mother and the dreams of the girl that loved him were simply tossed away by him for a greater love, crystal meth.

I’ve spent the last half of the year, taking a deep look at why I think, act, or respond to things the way that I do. It’s deep seeded and some of it goes back to even the earliest days of my childhood. Looking at my own feelings and neurosis has made me realize that I am not in a small majority of people. A great majority of people has issues. I would even say, every one has issues.

I know that John had really deep afflictions. I know that a large part of those went back to his own childhood. His feelings of abandonment and low self-esteem. The sad part of his story is that he is lost.

My life is good. Yet, sometimes when the radio plays certain songs that evoke these very deep and very personal emotions, I can’t help but wonder “What happened?” and “Why wasn’t I enough?”