Forever Your Girl

I remember. Terry, you know I do. Your long thick brown curls, askance from the way you always pulled your fingers through them…a gesture I know so well I can still tell when you’re going to do it. You remember how you used to call me and sing me a song over the phone when we couldn’t be together? Those nights at home, you in your basketball shorts and me in your shirt and thick flannel socks, dancing in the kitchen while we made nachos or whatever we could throw together from the leftovers in the fridge…do you remember pulling me against you, kissing my eyes, holding me so tightly I couldn’t breathe without breathing in your essence? God I loved you then. My musician, my partner, my lover, my darkness…my safe place. Your snores fade as you relax into me and we dream together.

Do you remember the crystal snowflakes? Moose the dog? Our weekend hiding from the world to write a song you never recorded. I try to haunt you, Terry, the way your voice haunts me...a tangible reminder of the snowy cabin that held us captive and in love for a moment. If I had only known that you were just that- moments- that you could forget me, that for me you are a lifetime but for you I am moments. The bathtub, the candles...if only I could not remember, but I can. The mind can be cruel; now it is all I have to keep me company.

Do you remember the night we did mushrooms and your screen door on your front porch didn’t latch, snapping back and pulling me off of three brick steps into a heap among the garden hose and gas can? I cracked the bone in my wrist that night, keeping in the pain as we skinny-dipped in the moonlight, making love in the chilly chlorinated end of summer water. Only when you saw the tears did you find your big old white t-shirt and fold it into a makeshift splint, taping my wrist against it with prewrap. I slept in that t-shirt for two years, after surgery when it was the only shirt I could get my compromised arm into…and other nights when you played shows and didn’t take me and didn’t call me and didn’t think of me. I thought of you, Sweet T. I remember. 

I remember the girl, “Pinky”, too young with tight jeans and a flame that you couldn’t seem to get away from. I remember when she became your girl then not your girl then your friend then god knows what. You said she didn’t mean anything, Terry. I remember the night you had me drive you to the concert, you looked past me and over me and at every too tight too made up groupie vying for a few minutes with the country star. I remember straddling your unconscious 300 lb. body in the back of the pickup truck, forcibly lifting you up and helping you into the passenger’s seat. I remember the look he gave me, your bass player, when he told me I was hot and incredible and could do so much better than you. Why in the hell did I stay here? He knew about Pinky before I did. He tried to save me. I tried to die. 

I remember the routine but painful surgery, where you checked on me every day for seven days, picking me up and driving me to your house so we could sleep next to each other. You drove me home in the early morning when I could not, giving me the magician’s illusion that you would be there for me. And they think I’m bad off now. They should have seen me, T, in those weeks and months of you ebbing and flowing like the tide, coming and going, choosing her who didn’t mean anything but could sleep at your house and drive to your concerts and play with your children. You replaced me, and you couldn’t understand why I couldn’t come see you play...why I couldn't watch you with her, watch you flaunt my replacement in front of me, acting for all the world like it didn’t hurt. You called me, you talked to me, you slept with me, you ebbed away. I tried to die, T. I couldn’t, but I tried. 

Only when we crashed did we finally say “I do”…only when the EMT’s tried to restart your heart, they thought I didn’t hear but I did hear. The open container careening through the truck, the panic in your deep brown eyes as you reached for me and the world turned upside down and over and over. You grasped my hand, reaching from behind the wheel to pull me to you, to wrap your body around me. Only when they pronounced you, when you died but I could see you…only when our spirits and souls sat together there, holding hands, watching as the old grizzled fire captain and his new 20-something trainee tried in vain to bring you back. He tried to save me. I tried to die. I thought finally we could be together…finally you wouldn’t have hotter girls or more important problems or a safety net of my guaranteed love and companionship…finally you would see that, even in the worst moments of our lives, we were together. But like always, Terry, like always…you left me. You left me. I reached desperately for your hand as the EMT shocked me back, jerking me from your arms into my body, where I lay trapped silently and conceivably forever…unable to speak. I am in here, Terry. No one else can hear me, can hear our laughter, can hear our singing, can feel our souvenir kisses as my memories wash over me and I am alone. They turn me; they change my sheets. They can’t hear our stories. All they hear is the beeping.

I remember. I wait for you, sometimes I see you, sometimes when the beeping stops for a moment, I feel your arms around me. I pray the beeping stops for good and we walk away together, Terry Gray. We are meant to be. I remember.