Person Adjacent

 So when I say my person was the third time, the charm, turned out I’ve miscounted for the last few decades. Because there was one before, one I never counted because we had one date and we ‘went out’ for less than a month. After chasing him for two years, I caught him and decided I didn’t want him.

Well, it’s not as pat as that—is it ever? The long and short of it was that he wasn’t quite what I was looking for, but he was close enough that we probably could have figured it out. Except I thought we could each do better.

Turned out I was right. It didn’t happen overnight, and it took him longer to find his person, but he eventually did, and got four bonus people in the form of her kids and even more in her extended circle of people. We saw each other once in the last 35 or so years, grade school reunion 12 years ago. He was annoyed at my Irish goodbye, but the bar got too loud, and I needed to go.

So we didn’t say goodbye. It was like leaving the phone off the hook.

I found out he died last week. He cheated death once, about a dozen years ago, so I thought maybe he had some superpowers gleaned from decades of comic book fandom. But no. Death wasn’t taking a second pass. His departure called up a whole bunch of memories I’ve all but forgotten.

Mostly good. Mostly a reckoning that we’d both eventually get where we needed to go and find the people who really, really got us. I’m happy to say we both did. 

Later days, Mike.