Into The Fire of Love



Chapter 1

July 4, 1985 dawned clear, bright and full of promise. I wasn’t up to see the sunrise because it was the first holiday off my summer job and I really needed to sleep in.  I didn’t know that it was a day that would change my life completely. I had just turned 19 the middle of May and this was the first time I had been allowed to live anywhere besides my parent’s home and the college dorm. This was a big summer for me.

I had gotten out of school the first week of June, so really I had been just living here a little over two and a half weeks.  A girlfriend of mine had asked me to move in with her and two other girls in April and it had taken until the last week of May to get permission from my parents to move in.  Sue had lived down the block from me since we’d lived in the neighborhood and we’d been friends.  At the beginning of my junior year of high school her family had bought another house a mile or less from downtown and moved there.  This was the house they had bought and Sue had it for the summer if she could keep the rent paid and the utilities current. Sue was a year older than I was and Linda and Cindy were two years older.

My summer job was the same as it had been since I was 16, the Dole Cannery.  The 12 block walk was nice because of the shade trees along the way and the quite neighborhood. From 7 am until 4 pm, this year, I sat atop a pile of beets with a piece of plywood with different sized holes to sort the beets for the Quality Control Department. When Quality Control called for a certain size, I prepared a rubber tub full of from 25 to 30 beets in it. This was my best job there at the cannery.  Other years I had worked outside being blasted with cold water on the graveyard shift where the beans had come off the trucks picking out leaves, children’s shoes, and whatever else had managed to get loaded on to the trucks with the beans. I wore my rain slicker because the spray would soak you to the skin otherwise. Then I worked on the first receiving line, same job, just a hotter environment.

The walk was good exercise and I was in the best shape of my life. With my bone structure, a size 11 was best for me, but that summer I did get down to a size 9 and looked way too thin for my 5’5” frame. Oh, by the way, my name is Lynn.

One of the main reasons that all four of us could live together was the size of the house and the fact that we all worked different shifts.  It was an old, two story Victorian house towering high on its large lot. The house was set back from the street so there was a large front yard and a very large back yard that faced the creek and the site of a long ago Ice House, with spaces to park quite a few cars.  All that was left of the Ice House was a very small amount of concrete and a metal cover that I supposed covered the old basement of the plant. The house had three bedrooms, plus a screened in sleeping porch that faced the creek, two bathrooms and a full basement with washer and dryer. On the main floor was the kitchen, pantry and three other rooms; I guess the front two would have been called sitting rooms and the one across from the kitchen was the den. The den also had the stairway leading up to the second floor. When the door was closed to the upstairs, there were two steps up from the floor to it, but you wouldn’t take notice of it unless you knew and wanted to go up the stairs. The stairs down to the basement were just to the left as you faced the upstairs door behind a portion of the wall. The house itself was at a bend in the road and the speed limit was 25 miles an hour. If you walked five blocks to the West there was a shopping center with a Sears and other smaller shops and just two blocks away was a Safeway store.

My room was the sleeping porch facing the backyard and the creek. Linda had the bedroom facing the bath, Sue the large front room facing the street and Cindy the room to the left, also facing the street. The two front bedrooms had a walk through closet; if you moved the clothes out of the way, you could walk from one room into the other, we all thought this was very odd, but maybe that was the way houses were built in the 1800’s. But I loved my sleeping porch because it was so very light and airy. The whole long wall going the width of the house was covered with large screened windows, which made my little room the best in the house. I loved my windows.  I had a door to close at the top of the stairs which closed me off from the rest of the upstairs and I enjoyed the screened in windows, the creek and the quiet of being in the rear of the house.  The only problem was the color of the walls and the ceiling; it was all a light green, not at all my favorite color. The one saving grace was that even my pale lavender dresser from my bedroom at home somehow blended in with the room very nicely.  I’d also brought my single bed from home rather than buy one since I was only going to be there until college started again in the fall.

We all had jobs during the day except Cindy. Sue worked swing shift at one of the little shops in the shopping mall and picked up odd jobs where ever she could.  Since my hours were the earliest, I was always the first one up and had the downstairs all to myself.  Then I’d walk to the Cannery, work my day and come home to my sleeping porch. Life had gone on this way for the first three weeks of the summer, but when July approached Linda and Cindy said they wanted to throw a party for Linda’s boyfriend’s best friend who was born on the fourth of July. So it would be a combination birthday party and Fourth of July celebration all rolled into one.  I, in my innocence, said “I’ll help with the salads or whatever else you want me to do.” This was how Linda and I ended up in the kitchen after work for three straight days making the food for the party.

The food was simple faire and as with the bills we created two cash funds – one for the food and beer and one for Ted’s present.  Of course we all knew we only had enough money for beer to get the party rolling, but there was enough food to keep everyone satisfied and there would of course, always be a beer run going the two blocks down to the store, so we didn’t worry ourselves about that fact at all.  I knew when all this began I did not have anyone to ask to the party, but with the hours I was working I didn’t expect to stay up all that late anyway. As a college Sophomore-to-be, I would be content to drink a few beers, observe the party for awhile and then go upstairs and get some much needed sleep.  At least that was what I thought on the 1st of July.

Linda and Cindy went shopping, (I doubt this fund for Ted’s present had more than twenty dollars in it) and what they ended up bringing home was a leopard spotted terry shower wrap as a joke gift and a birthday card.  Neither Sue nor I saw anything alarming about this because we both had our minds on other things.

Sue’s boyfriend was due from out of town and I was just looking forward to a few days off from work and the fact that this was to be my first party where drinks would be served.  In the Eighties everyone had at least tasted alcohol, so at 19 that wasn’t the area I was unfamiliar with, but a party with alcohol was.

I still had to work the 2nd and 3rd before the holiday, so my mind was more on a three day break from work and how I could really use the rest.  I stayed up later on July 3rd than my regular bedtime of  9 pm so that I could stay awake for at least some of the next day’s party.  No alarm woke me at 5 am and I slept until after 9 am.

Chapter Two

The July 4th progressed smoothly, until around 3 pm when Linda and Cindy ran into my room and looked out the back windows.  Two cars pulled up. Out of the first car two guys emerged, Linda said, “That’s Tom, my boyfriend, and turned to Cindy and said, “That’s Jed, and he’ll be your date.”  Then I looked at Linda and asked, “Who’s the guy getting out of the Green Metallic Firebird?”  She turned me and shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know who he is.” So, just to say something, I said flippantly, “Then I’ll take him.” They both laughed and walked out of the room.

As the party got going, other people arrived and soon it became obvious that someone had passed the word around about the party.  Soon there were 30+ people there and the number was still climbing.  People were scattered throughout the house, as well as the front and backyards.  So when someone said, “Anymore beer?”  One of us would say, “No, we never expected this many people, but two blocks west from here is a Safeway, you can go get some more.” It worked and someone would shout, “Beer Run, everyone contributes.” After that it was out of our hands and people would go and get more until around 7 pm, when the beer they brought back wouldn’t fit into the refrigerator in the kitchen and the overflow ended up in the Pantry refrigerator, with the one in the kitchen having a note saying where to go for more.

At around 5 pm Linda and Cindy decided it was time for Jed’s birthday gift and card. They had also made a very small cake and with the crowd of people everyone decided that just Jed would eat the cake. After Jed opened his present, Linda and Cindy teased him into putting it on. Then the chase was on.  Linda, Cindy and a lot of the other girls at the party started chasing him in the front yard and when someone finally got a handhold and pulled, the snaps let go and poor Jed was standing there naked as the cars passed buy on the street.  When the chase began I started laughing, and the end of it I was doubled  over with laughter, as were most of the people in the front yard. Needless to say Jed went back into the house and got his clothes and ended up being teased by the guests.  Jed enjoyed the joke and the gift and said it was the best birthday he could remember, or at least the wildest.

After about 8:30 pm the party moved inside, filling the three downstairs rooms and the kitchen and pantry. The food was long since gone but there was plenty of beer. I was drinking my second beer of the evening and trying to decide if I wanted to get another or go on up to bed when something unexpected happened.  I was sitting on the second step to the upstairs with my back against the closed door, a nice, comfortable place to watch the people. While I was sitting there watching the crowd, someone sat down beside me. I turned to see who it was and low and behold it was the very good-looking guy from the green Firebird. The first words out of his mouth were “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?” I almost laughed, but instead I said, “That would be highly unlikely since I just finished my freshman year at Southern Oregon College in Ashland.” He answered back, “I work in Medford, so I’m on campus quite a bit, so I probably have seen you before. My name is "Jeff”.

We exchanged introductions and I told him my name was Lynn.  I completely forgot about going to sleep early and went and got us two more beers.  I was impressed with Jeff’s intelligence first, and the fact that he would look right into my eyes as he talked to me. We talked for a while longer, but the party was staring to get really loud and after Sue, Linda and Cindy told everyone to quiet down; Jeff asked me if there was someplace we could go where the noise level wasn’t so high and we could hear ourselves think. So I grabbed four more beers, to this day I don’t know why I got four more, but I asked him to stand up and I opened the door we had been leaning on and said, “Follow me to the top of the stairs, but close the door behind you.”

At the top of the stairs I told him to take a left onto the sleeping porch and I’d be right back. Too many beers for me and I needed the bathroom. When I got back he was standing at the window and said, “Come here, you can see the fireworks at the Fairgrounds.” We watched for a while until Jeff asked where the bathroom was, too many beer for him too.  I said down hall and the first left is the bathroom. I looked around my room, I had a bed, dresser and one chair and that was it, where was I going to have him sit?  On the chair were the clothes I had thrown there from this morning, so I quickly moved them into the makeshift closet and when he came back into the room, he said, “Why don’t we sit on the bed so we can both be comfortable?” We ended up sitting on the bed and we must have talked for almost a half an hour more.  Now I was a virgin, mostly because I had put college and bettering myself first and most guys my age had been taking “No” for answer.  Jeff had already told me he was 24, he sure didn’t look it, and I had told him I had just turned 19 in May.  I really wasn’t thinking clearly because of the beers, but he was so charming and so knowledgeable that I had forgotten everything else and was completely caught up in our conversation. When he leaned over and kissed me, his kiss was so tender and soft I really didn’t know how to react to the stirrings I felt.  Oh, I’d been kissed many times before, but never had I had this reaction.  I know now it was the chemistry between us, but then nothing mattered except his kiss.

After about ten minutes he got up and locked the door. No words can really describe the first time you make love with someone you care about, so I won’t try. It must have been at least an hour and a half, slow and unhurried. Then about 10 pm I got up and he headed for the bathroom, I had put my bra and panties back on and turned the radio up a bit.

All I remember doing was dancing to the slow music.  I keep remembering one song; Gary Puckett and the Union Gap and their song:

“This Girl is a Woman Now.”

Then one night, her world was changed,
her life and dreams were rearranged,
and she would never be the same again.

This girl tasted love, as tender as the
chance of dawn.
Our hearts told her we were right,
and on that sweet and velvet night,
a child had died and a woman had
been born.”

When Jeff came back he just sat on the twin bed and watched me dance. When I started for the door, he said, “You can only leave if you promise me to come back and continue dancing like you were, exactly like you were”

As I pulled the sleep tee over my head, I glanced back and said,” I’ll be right back, and then we will see if you get your wish.” I met Linda in the hallway looking just as disheveled as I was.  She asked, “Have you been sleeping?” I said, “Remember that cute guy from the green Firebird?” And she said, “No, no way!” I said "Well, I’m not a virgin anymore and now I am hoping I see him again after tonight.”

When I went back to the sleeping porch, Jeff didn’t want me to dance anymore, he wanted something else entirely. After the second time, I fell asleep in a man’s arms for the first time in my life; I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. Jeff held me the rest of the night and we woke up around 9 am.  The morning love was even nicer, but we both had more practice in pleasing the other and it was grand. He stayed with me most of the next day and around 4 pm he said he really should be getting back to Medford.  He said, “I’ll drive up next week end, if you’d like.” Of course I said yes and that was how our relationship began. Then about a month later he was late arriving. He’d called me before he left so I knew the hours were mounting up, I’d already called his roommate in Medford and he said he hadn’t heard anything and Jeff should have been there by now.  I was really worried by the time 11 pm came and I finally heard his car pull up in the backyard. Most of the passenger side of his car was caved in! When he told me he’d fallen asleep at the wheel in Albany, about 20 minutes south on the freeway, I didn’t know what to say.  I just held him and said maybe we should start making it every other weekend from now on.

This carried on until the middle of August and then, with only a little over a month until I would return to college at SOC and we’d be just 20 miles apart, Jeff wanted to break up. It would be months before I knew the reason why.  For some reason I heard this voice in the back of my mind telling me that it was just a matter of time before I saw Jeff again and that our relationship really wasn’t over yet.

Sue moved out at the end of July and the middle of August two more girls moved in. So for about five weeks there were five of us living in the two story house.  The second week of August has not been a good week for Linda because that was when she found out for sure that she was pregnant with Tom’s baby. She had conceived on the 4th of July, which had also been the last time she had seen him. Then about three weeks later one of the new roommates found out she was pregnant too, but she was lucky, her boyfriend wanted to get married.  The only problem was she knew she should marry him, but she didn’t love him so it was a mixed blessing.

At the time I wasn’t using any form of birth control except counting 15 days from the mid-point of my period and adding two days to either side of that date.  It seemed to work because I didn’t get the pill until two years later when I was twenty-one, and then I was only on it for about two and a half years.

For me the last five weeks before returning to school seemed to drag by until one of the guys who were shoveling the beets out from under me as I was grading the beets, asked me out. Jesse was cute and funny and he had been keeping my mind off of missing Jeff. Without him, I’d have been lonely and I decided, why not, I liked Paul. When the summer was over and I returned to SOC, Paul and I were still going out, so every other weekend I would get a ride to the airport in Medford and fly student standby to Eugene to see him.

One week end in October when I had stayed down in Ashland for mid-terms, our dorm floor was asked to a party. I really didn’t want to go, but the other girls convinced me that there was strength in numbers and we’d all be safe.  The party was four blocks past Lithia Park in a large house.  When Dana and I walked in I couldn’t help but notice that there were a lot of blacks there, which made both of us feel a little uncomfortable.

When we walked into the second room to get to the kitchen for some beers, who did I see sitting on one of the couches, who if I’d reached out my hand I could have touched, was Jeff and he was with Jill, one of the cheerleaders from school. From that moment on he just glared at me, I could actually feel his eyes boring into me. Dana and I nursed the one beer we each had and talked to one or two people during the short hour we stayed. For the full hour Jeff never took his eyes off of me once.

It made me feel so uncomfortable and the party was so boring that I convinced Dana to leave with me and after trying for a ride and having no luck, we walked back to campus. It took us a little over thirty-five minutes to walk back and after I’d gotten ready to study, Jill, who lived three doors down from me and didn’t know me from Adam, came onto the floor. Since most of the girls were still out, I could hear her and I got up to make sure. She was back and I knew nothing had happened on her date with Jeff because she was back way too soon.  I let out a sigh of relief and went back into my room with a small smile on my face.

While at SOC I was majoring in Journalism. This led me to the school newspaper where I was Copy Editor for two terms and Assistant Editor for one.  I would have been Editor the next year and there have been times I wish I had just stayed there and not moved up Eugene.  I had another month and a half to go until the end of fall term and I thought I’m easy to find. I knew that Jill had told Jeff that I lived in the same dorm because she too glared at me for a week after that fateful party. I waited for two weeks before I went back up to Eugene to see Jesse, all the time hoping that Jeff would call and we’d get back together.  It didn’t happen and when Paul kept asking me to transfer to the University of Oregon in Eugene, I finally decided I’d might as well, at least I could end this waiting and move on with my life.

Chapter 3

On January 2, 1987 I moved into a co-op house on the University of Oregon campus. There were several of these housing arrangements back then. About thirty girls shared a large house with a resident housemother. The meals were included and three people were assigned to each room, the third floor had been converted into a sleeping area with bunk beds wall to wall. When the rooms that we shared were large enough, the person with the most seniority would get the one bed per room, this was usually a senior. I met a lot of new people and made some close friends while living there for two terms. My closest two friends were Sheila and Peg.  Sheila introduced me to both cigarettes and marijuana and with her Top cigarette roller, we had quite a time.

The University of Oregon was alright but it was much bigger than Southern Oregon had been and that took a while to get used to. I tried to continue in Journalism, but the teacher in the reporting class didn’t think women should be in journalism, or write anything other than in the Society columns.  The only story he gave me a good grade on was reporting a wedding – which I had written in a hurry, five minutes tops, and made it as ‘sugary-sweet’ as possible - I got an “A”. After that I changed my major to Psychology with a minor in Anthropology.

My relationship with Paul lasted until June and then he started seeing another girl who lived in Reboc, the same co-op housing that I did. When school started in the fall I moved into the dorm.  I quickly got sick of seeing Paul and Jan hanging all over each other in their matching suede jackets walking around campus.  So I decided to take a term off and when my Mom was reading the Salem paper she came across a story about Jeff.  She handed me the paper and I started to read. It seemed that Jeff had been in a serious accident on his way to work on a Monday morning and he had hit a dump truck head on. The article went on to say that he’d been in a coma for almost three months and he was at the hospital in town.  From then I checked obituaries, praying I would not find his name listed there.  I should have gone to visit him then, but I was scared to, so I waited about a year and called his Dad to find out how he was doing.

His Dad was kind and understanding and told me that Jeff had to relearn everything; from the simple thing like feeding himself to just tying his own shoes. After that it was education to help him catch up as far as he could with the basics: reading, writing and math. His job was going to send him back to Oregon State University to retrain in the computers he’d loved so much. For someone who had sustained massive head injuries, he did re-learn quite a lot, and even though every step involved heavy concentration he kept at it. He was having a great deal of trouble with his short term memory so that his retention was seriously compromised, but he stuck to it and went as far as he could with his education, which is to be admired.

So in November of 1989, I called the phone number his Dad had given me and Jeff and I talked for a while and he asked me out, warning me that he did not remember me at all and I should write down everything I could remember about our relationship.  I really didn’t feel ready then to put it down on paper. It would take me fourteen years to finally write it down, but since I knew the story wasn’t close to being finished yet, I guess waiting was the right thing to do. After about two weeks had passed, Jeff said he needed me and would I marry him. Of course I said “Yes” and sort of expected a ring for Christmas.  I had bought him a sterling silver St. Christopher medal and had engraved the message: “To J. Until the end of time. From L”, and gave it to him when he picked me up on January 3rd.  Jeff started at Oregon State and I was going back to Eugene for my last three terms.

When I didn’t get an engagement ring for Christmas, I thought Valentine’s Day is the day before his birthday, maybe he was saving it for then. We spent almost every weekend together; either he would drive down from Corvallis and pick me up and we would spend the weekend at his place, or he’d stay with me in Eugene in my first apartment. The apartment was the upstairs of a house with another apartment below. I’d finally gotten a place off campus for the last two terms until I finished my degree.  I’d have a roommate for spring term, but she was gone a lot, and then I would be by myself for the summer term.  Everything was going fine, but I kept wondering why Jeff didn’t give me my engagement ring.  All this came to a head on May 12th, my 21st Birthday.  I had repeatedly asked him if he’d be coming to Eugene and what time to expect him.  He wouldn’t answer me and it was driving me crazy. When 3 pm came on my birthday and no Jeff, I started making plans with some of my friends to go out.  At 6 pm we were almost ready to leave, coats on and everything, when there was a knock on my door.  It was Jeff, of course, but by then I was so angry that I started a fight and sent him away.  We were both very stubborn people, but if either of us had called the other we would have made up and everything would have been fine, but we didn’t.  So the relationship just died in it’s own and I went on with my life

I really had an easy final term; I was entering data into the computer on one Masters Thesis, teaching a study group on another Psychology subject and finishing up my science requirements for my degree. When August arrived and finals were over I had completed my degree program in Psychology and Peg, who had moved down to Costa Mesa during Spring Break to be with her boyfriend, had called and said they were getting married and would I be her Maid of Honor, I took three months of vacation to go down to southern California and ended up sewing my dress and the bride’s maids dress.  I was kept busy and the area never left me bored.

When Peg got married I house sat their apartment for the month they took for their honeymoon in Hawaii.  I never gave one thought to the fact that I should have been looking for a job down there all that time; so in early November my cat, Blackie, got a ride back to Oregon on an airplane for a couple of hours and I took the train home.

The fool that I was wanted to live in Eugene, where I never, ever could find a decent job; no matter how hard I tried.  So I started looking for jobs down there.  I was really picky about what I wanted to do.  I was waiting for the Caseworker 1 position for the State to open up, so I thought I would answer an ad for Stretch & Sew Fabrics while I waited for my real job to come along.  After the interview with Stretch & Sew I was walking back to my parents’ car when I heard someone call my name, “Lynn!” When I turned there was Jon, an old boyfriend of mine, and he asked which way I was going and when I pointed West, he pointed East, and said, “Get in.” I called my parents and said I’d met up with some friends of mine from school and I’d be back the next day. I would return to Eugene every week for two weeks until I found a Nurses’ Aid job in a retirement home, just so I could be with Jon.  Just goes to show you that love can be a mistake as well as a blessing.
We moved into a bungalow where the State was building a new freeway and the entrance ramp was half built and since it was almost Christmas, the highway crew were not due back until after the first of the year. When it snowed around 9 pm on Christmas Eve, the traffic just stopped and the city fell silent. Around 11:30 pm Jon and I got out coats, gloves and winter boots and decided to walk downtown which was about five blocks away.  Ours were the first foot prints in the snow and it was obvious from how the fast the snow was coming down that they too would be covered by morning. The lights were all glowing brightly in the deserted downtown district and we walked around for a while, just enjoying the lights. When we neared home, we decided to cross the street and walk up the unfinished ramp of the freeway. The whole evening was magical and it is one of my better memories.

I’d go to work and Jon stayed home after a dreadful three days at a wood products mill, the work was simply too heavy for him to do. This was our world until around April when Jon got into a fight with his brother and knocked Allen over the head with a baseball bat.  Luckily Allen was not hurt; he did have a headache for a week and a half and his eyes were blood shot for a few days, but nothing really serious. That was when we moved to Portland to get away from his family. The gang activity would not arrive for a few more years, but little did we know it was on the way. We tried moving into a small apartment, but that turned into a real mess.  The first night we spent there was a nightmare.  Jon and I had a fight which turned into him giving me a black eye.  From then on the night was hellish.  I didn’t know until years later just what I had been seeing, all that blood all over the walls. 
I wrote a story a few years later describing what had happened that Saturday night. In the daylight the apartment didn’t look all that bad but in the dark when we finally had everything moved in that Saturday night things changed.  I witnessed a murder and didn’t even know it at the time. We were both worn out from moving our things in when the walls started closing in on me.  Then I saw splashes of blood like someone was cutting me with a knife.  In every room of that small one bedroom; kitchen, bath, short hallway and living room it was the same.  Downward knife slash and blood splashing on the walls.  I ran from room to room and it just would not stop!!  I was screaming and frightened out of my wits!  Blood everywhere and it wouldn’t stop.  Jon tried to calm me down but it wasn’t working until he finally hit me in the face and I got a black eye with the burse running down my check a little bit.  Not a lot of pain but I slammed the bedroom door in his face and told him to go sleep on the couch. 

The next morning I quietly walked out the door so he wouldn’t wake up and got into my car.  I drove down to Salem to spend the day with Heather, a friend of my mom that I’d always taken my troubles to.  All the time I was growing up I would call her when things really got out of hand at home.  She was my confidant and I knew I could talk to her.  But when I got there I could only him and hah about how I got the black eye, it seemed I needed time to work up the nerve to tell her.  There were other people there that day at her house; her son, Ian and his wife and their little boy who had just started to walk, and Cindy, Heather’s daughter.  Cindy was waiting for her friend to come down from Portland.  So I really could not just sit down and talk to Heather like I had planned. 

Cindy kept pacing and tried to call her friend’s phone number in Portland several times, but there was no answer.  Ian and his family left, and then the phone rang and it was Cindy friend’s Mom.  Angie had been murdered by her husband and Angie’s mom was on the way to the morgue.  This was my exit call and I told everyone goodbye and got into my car.

I had mostly forgotten the whole thing about Cindy’s friend until years later and we were just sitting on her patio listening to CD’s and talking when I asked her if she remembered the time I had shown up at her house long ago with a black eye.  She said sort of since she had, of course, she had a lot more things to think about than me at the time.  I proceeded to tell her what had brought me there that day and her eyes kept getting bigger and bigger.  That was when I found out the whole story.

Angie and her husband had gone to a party that night and he’d gotten quite drunk.  She told him she wanted a divorce and that was when the horror began.  He had slashed her just the way I had seen it, blood on the wall and everything.  He had then taken her body and buried it in a field on the land that his parents owned an Orchard.  Then he had gone and picked up his 9 year old little brother and took him to where he had buried Angie.  After he told his little brother that he had killed her he had taken a gun and raised it up and shot himself in the head.  I guess the screams of the little brother had been heard and the Police were able to easily close the case.  I still feel sorry for that child having to have seen all that.  To my knowledge their apartment looked exactly as I had described.  So in reality that night I had really witnessed a murder without really knowing I had.

Chapter 4

So now it was time to move again, a pattern that haunted our whole relationship.  We found a really nice house in Vancouver with one bedroom, one bath with a garage and basement which the owner had built with his own hands.  I loved the extra touched he’d added; a small desk built into the wall next to the refrigerator and a Lazy Susan in the corner cabinet, plus there was a bell to ring in the kitchen that was hooked up in the basement so I didn’t have to go down the stairs to get Jon’s attention.  The State of Washington was putting in a freeway ramp where the house stood at the end of Redding Street and when they bought the house the owner got his payment and we got $2500.00, enough to get married and have a week long honeymoon at The Inn at Spanish Head on the coast.  I should have taken into consideration that fact that Jon was always lying to me about looking for a job, and that marring him would turn out to be a big mistake.  Looking back is always easier than looking forward.  So a week before Christmas, 1991 we stood in front of the Circuit Court Judge and got married.  We spent our honeymoon on the Oregon coast at a new hotel.  The hotel was so empty that we lived on room service, and the maids even got me an iron and an ironing board to hem Jon’s pants.  We had enough money left over to look for an apartment and to buy some cheap furnishings when we got back to Vancouver.


Chapter 5

Life carried on pretty like this until July of 1994 when I fell down a flight of starts working for the Children’s Services Division for the State of Oregon.  The flyer for the Caseworker 1 position that I had been waiting for had just been posted that morning and I was wondering how to get time off when my foot slipped out from under me as I rounded the last set of concrete stairs.  I ended up breaking the spur off a vertebra in my lower back which was pinching a nerve that the Milo gram and the dye shot into my back and neck did not show.  I had been tossed around for over a year when I had the Milo gram and two weeks later my Mom had come up and was so shocked that she made me an appointment with her Doctor in Salem.  Dr. Smith sent me to an orthopedic doctor and that doctor sent me to a neurologist.  I had already been living with pain so bad for over a year that I could not even balance my check book, so when these doctors saw me they had me in the hospital, prepped for surgery within three weeks. 

Our marriage was nowhere near perfect; we were living on my Workers’ Compensation and a small check from Social Security.  Jon could not find a job because he really wasn’t looking for one, so my compensation checks were what we were living on.  The same as it had been before we married, but I thought I loved him and stayed anyway.

We had rented a two-bedroom townhouse over looking the Columbia River and could see the lights from Portland through our bedroom window.  But the rent was too high and on the limited amount I was receiving each month that it was just to expensive to stay, so we found a one bedroom house for $100.00 cheaper per month and moved into it.

It would be four years before the doctors released me for light-duty work and the hearing for Worker’s Compensation was over.  I had a bad lawyer and didn’t get a good settlement for the 37 degrees of permanent injury the fall had done to my back.  In total I lost over four years of my life to the back pain and surgery, and this back problem would be with me for the rest of my life.

In December of 1998 I found a job in Cost Accounting for a Sportswear/Swimsuit manufacturer in Portland in the Product Engineering department.  I liked the job, but there were a lot of problems I had to face with it, not the least of them being the obscene phone calls the other woman in the department received all day long on the telephone we had to share.  I’d answer the phone, “This is Lynn, Product Engineering.” But her boyfriend would still launch into an obscene description of the sex they were going to have that night.  When I couldn’t get a word in edgewise to tell him I wasn’t Jan, I simply started hanging up when he’d start in. The phone calls were still upsetting and made getting back to my job after the filth my ears had been forced to hear was unsettling.

The engineers and their supervisor knew of the phone calls, but Jan and I had a different supervisor and she did not believe it was going on. With seven people saying the exact same thing, you’d wonder how much more proof was needed for her to understand that there was a real problem and she should do something about it. This was also the same supervisor who could not locate the work area for over nine months because you either entered from outside or came through the restrooms to get there. Our department was located where the old swimming pool had been when they actually tested the swimwear to see if it preformed to specifications.

For most of the two and a half years I worked there I was a fit model on Monday mornings until I started to hide out in the bathroom from Maxine so she couldn’t find me. The trouble with being a fit model was that I was modeling the clothes and swimsuits in front of the very people I worked with and it was just too embarrassing. The last time I did model I was given a swimsuit that had been cut out and sewed wrong.  I’d rolled it up around my waist so it would semi-fit and walked out in front of my co-workers. When Max asked me to please roll it down so they could see it, the giggles started low and increased as I kept unrolling the suit until it reached the top of my knees!  Now that was a really embarrassing, though laughable later moment and also the very last time I was a “fit model.”  Hiding out in the rest rooms became a constant Monday thing.

In April of 1999 Jan told the supervisor that she was pregnant and need three months off starting the end of May.  She trained a girl who was suppose to help me do the Spring/Summer line of 526 styles of sportswear and swimsuits, only Nancy came to me after Jan had left for her leave and toll me she didn’t understand at all how to do the job and I had to re-trained her and then she stayed just three weeks. It took just over three months to work up the folders, make the changes as they came in, do the cost margin sheets and wrap the season up.  The Spring/Summer line was the biggest line we had.  I spent 2 and half months doing all the work myself even though I’d repeatedly asked the supervisor for some help – I had lost sight of the top of my desk weeks before and was working six days a week – to have her come over and look for three minutes and go back to her office and never get me any help at all. This burned me out so completely that by the time that Jan returned I was exhausted and asked for my vacation time and gave the supervisor my notice.  I did tell her I would work the 2 weeks after as my notice when I returned.  I had been doing my job, Jan’s job and filling in for the secretaries when they were ill and I just couldn’t take any more. By the time I got back my desk was cleared and the supervisor said I only had to train my replacement and leave in a week.

By this time Jon had applied for college grants and loans and was riding the bus out to Portland Community College and doing pretty well with a 3.00 GPA.  So he decided he wanted to go to school in Reno starting in January.  I was so stressed out I welcomed the change and agreed.  He also talked me into taking more classes – just six credits – so we could both have money coming in.  It all sounded well and good, even though I already had a degree in Psychology, so I agreed. Three months after we moved out of Portland the drive by shooting started and the gangs were everywhere.

Reno was a great place and I enjoyed living there.  I was working full time at the Sparks Fire Department and taking two classes at the University of Nevada, Reno. The classes were Juvenile Delinquency and Deviance, both upper division Psychology classes. They both required that I give up my weekends to attend them and write two term papers for each class. I was busy, but loving my job and classes.  That semester Jon managed to flunk out of school; he was taking Biology, Chemistry and Soil Science over my objections that they were too hard and he wasn’t ready for that much on his plate. He ignored me and failed every class for a total 1.75 GPA.  Then he forced me to keep taking my classes so the money would still come in while he found a job cooking. 

That was the winter it snowed 24 inches in 12 hours.  I had decided against taking the car to work and had ridden the bus in.  At noon the City had sent everyone home.  It took 2 hours to get home and five hours later the electricity went off and we were without heat and lights for 8 hours, so I just had crawled into bed to try and keep warm.  Winters in Reno are not usually this severe, but this one was.

That May I ended up in the hospital needing gall bladder surgery.  But after the gall bladder surgery I just couldn’t find any jobs at all, temporary or full time.  I should have applied for unemployment insurance but didn't, mostly I was just too tired from all the trying and failing in my marriage that it was just too hard to overcome the depression and it set in hard and fast.  My parents wanted me back in Oregon so we moved back and were living in Oakridge half way up the road to Bend outside of Springfield.

Chapter 6

March 1, 2002.  Why was I here?  I had just woken up in a hospital bed and when I looked around, I was alone.  I had been in hospital rooms before so at least I knew that much.  I searched for the nurse’s call button and pressed it and waited. I didn’t have any memory of what had brought me there, just the most slitting headache of my life! After what seemed like forever, but was probably only 20 minutes or so a nurse walked in and I asked her, “Just why am I here and why does my back and my head hurt so much?” She said, “Well, I guess I should sit down, this is going to take awhile.

She told me I had been in a car accident and that I had a concussion and I’d been brought to the emergency room around 10:30 am that morning.  She wasn’t sure of the details but she started asking me questions. “What year was it?” I replied, “I think it is 2001 and my father just died in November.” She said, “No it is March 1st, 2002.” Who’s the President, again I was at a loss, “Is it Bill Clinton?” “One right,” she said. “Do you know what city you are in?” and I said, probably Springfield, Oregon.” “Second one right.” and we laughed, but my head hurt so bad it wasn’t much of a laugh.

“So is the concussion the reason my head aches so much?” and she said “Yes it is.” “Why am I alone, where is my husband?” “Well, he had to leave since his Mom brought him down from Oakridge, you totaled the car.

Great was all I could think, I liked that car.  She proceeded to tell me that it was now 8pm and that the Doctor for the ward would be in shortly. She also asked if I was hungry and I said, “Yes, but I’m not sure what I can eat.” She said she would see what they had. “Oh, my name is Diane and yours is?” I thought for a minute and finally found it, but it didn’t fit, “I think it is Lynn, but it doesn’t feel right. She patted my hand and said the Doctor would be in shortly.

About an hour later a doctor walked in and asked how I was feeling.  I explain that I had no memory of what had happened, but the nurse had said I was in a car accident. He said, “Yes, and you’ve been out for over ten and a half hours.” Diane said you remembered some things, but that you were off on the date.  He said, “So you are having problems with your short term memory for sure.  Either your memory will come back gradually or all at once or maybe only bits and pieces will return.  But there is the possibility it will never come back t all and you will never know how the accident happened.  So be prepared for that too.” “But you can’t force it; just let it come back as it wants to.”  I did ask how my back was because I did remember I’d had back surgery and a fusion when I was 24.  To this he answered, “We have taken ex-rays and nothing looks like it is broken, but we won’t be sure for awhile.  Let’s just see how things progress, shall we?”

With that I sipped some more of the ginger ale and tried to eat a few bites of the chocolate pudding, but I was really more worried than hungry since my memory seemed more like Swiss cheese than any sort of functioning mental ability.  I could remember that I had a College Degree in Psychology but nothing since early November when my Dad had passed away suddenly. The nurse arrived with a shot to make my head stop hurting so much, but said that they couldn’t give me anything for sleep because they had to watch me because of the concussion, but she assured me that they would make me as comfortable as possible and just to turn on the TV for a distraction and try to relax.  That would prove much easier said than done.

I spent a restless night taking small, short naps when I could, but the nurses were in every half an hour or so to check on me and take my vital signs. The next morning around 10 am my husband showed up. He apologized for not staying the night with me, but said his mom had to get home and he had no choice.  He was another mystery. He talked liked we’d known each other forever and yet something felt wrong and I wasn’t sure what.

Around 2 pm another doctor came in and mostly repeated what the doctor had said last night.  They had no idea how long it was going to take for my memory to come back and that my short-term memory was definitely affected so just relax and not worry and see how things progressed.  Much easier said than done, I thought again. My husband did fill in a few of the pieces but since I’d been alone in the car he couldn’t tell me a lot.  Jon did say that I had come within 6 inches of taking out some people’s bedroom on their mobile home on the back road to Oakridge. The wife was sick and her husband had been sitting with her and I almost caved in the wall on top of them.  That was scary! 

So was just going to the bathroom. They had removed the catheter and I’d have to call a nurse to help me get to the rest room. She’d help me slowly shuffle hunched over to use the bathroom. This was an ordeal and my back would really hurt when I returned to bed. They always had some pain meds ready because they knew I’d need them for awhile.

After three days they let me go home.  Even that was strange. We had two cats and I smelled of the hospital so it took them awhile to get used to me again. Patches and Max did keep me company while I spent the next 3 weeks in bed, just getting up to go to the bathroom.  Showers were hard, my husband would have to help me stand just to rinse off. At least he left me alone, not the way it had been with my back surgery years before when he had always wanting sex.

When I finally could walk around the house a little I found that I would forget what I was doing.  I’d have to place Post-it notes all over the place to remind me of when I was to see my doctor again or to hold on to a thought, but I spent most of my time not knowing why I’d entered a room.  I hated my husband to touch me unless it was needed and then two and a half months later he touch me and “I hate you,” rushed through my mind. After being married so long, that made me step back, to say the least.  He told me he loved me at least ten times a day, but I never answered back, I just remained quiet.

My Birthday was coming up in May and I started sorting through my things in April.  I had already told him I was going home to see my mother for a few weeks and this was my way of cleaning up all the things I no longer wanted. Clothes that were too big, books I had read and no longer wanted, just sorting what I did want from what I didn’t. Since I was leaving a lot of things behind, not that he knew that then, there weren’t a whole lot of boxes that I did pack, mostly the things I really loved.  So on May 10th I got on a train with a rolling suitcase and my two pillows strapped on top. I need one for my head and one for between my knees when I slept.  I had called my mother and told her I was leaving him, I just couldn’t stay any longer.

The train was two hours late that day and I had to wait around the tiny station because of a forest fire down South. I learned that day that the freight trains owned the tracks and that the Amtrak had to move off onto a siding whenever one was due to come through. You learn the strangest things when you are waiting around for travel connections. At least it was a nice day so the waiting wasn’t too bad. I spent a lot of time talking to the agents though to see just how late the train was going to be and calling my mom to let her know.  A very boring day to say the least and my back was hurting something terrible by the time the train finally pulled into the station three hours late.  Mom wasn’t happy that I was coming, but said she could use the help sorting out all my Dad’s things that needed to be donated after his death.  I never gave my husband an exact date of when I was coming home, just told him that we were going to sort through things and it would take a little time.

My mom’s grand niece and her husband were due out from Atlanta the last week of May, and they were going to stay for two weeks.  Mom and I, with my sisters urging decided to buy a computer and have Robyn and Jeff help us set it up and get it running.  Now I had never been on the internet in my life, I’d used a computer before for my jobs, spreadsheets, word processing and accounting programs, but I never been on the web.  So this was a brand new experience.

Chapter 7

We met at my cousin’s wedding and we hit it off right away.  Sam Rhodes was Jill’s new husband’s commanding officer.  I saw him sitting across the room, alone, and our eyes locked.  We both started walking towards each other and it felt like we had known each other forever.  We talked for months and nothing was off limits, it seemed. So we talked on the internet for long hours every night.  Sam was a career Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force and he was getting ready to retire.  He loved to be my best critic on my writing, which was a new item that the car accident had given me.  I wrote him a story and he loved it.

“The Touch of a Man

The touch, the feel, the smell of a man, I had forgotten how it felt.  Then you said, “The touch, the smell, the feel of a woman….” I sat bolt upright in bed and turn to look at your face, “Were you reading my mind?”  You just smiled and said that it had been so long for both of us; with the divorce, the finding of someone who did not have any diseases, everything that we had been thinking so hard about what it was like and wanting the physical feeling for so long that we had both been thinking the very same things for quite a long time now.

I had been feeling this smoldering fire that was tearing me up inside, so when a girl friend of mine had suggested we go for coffee at this upscale coffee shop, I had said yes. I wasn’t really looking, but if you don’t step out the front door, how are you going to meet someone?  I had met you in the coffee shop when I was supposed to meet my girl friend. While I had been waiting you had pulled up the chair next to me and asked if I would care for a little bit of company until your friend arrived too. Since we were waiting for others to show up, I had said yes. Right after my cell phone had rung, yours had too and we both laughed when we hung the phones up, we had both been stood up!  So we continued to talk and enjoy each others conversation.  I didn’t have to go back to work this afternoon and so you called in and took the afternoon off.

This unplanned meeting was becoming something I had never expected.  Just like people say, when you stop looking for something, you usually find it.  We found that we both needed the company of an intelligent person; who could joke, tease and hold a decent conversation. We had never realized just how important that was until we had suddenly become free.  Relationships are never easy, we both knew that, but you also could not put the entire weight of a marriage on one person’s shoulders, either. We lightly touched upon our marriages, nothing really wrong, just that we had not been getting what we needed from our separate spouses and felt that it was time to move on. We both knew that was a risky step since we had both been married for a long time by today’s standards.

Meeting people was hard for me; I had never been good at making friends, or they never seemed to last because they would let me down when I needed them the most.  So my faith in other people was compromised.  For some reason I was relaxing with you and felt that I could just be myself and not worry about making every sentence, every word, perfect. The friendly banter continued until it was approaching 5 pm and you said, “Don’t you think it is time we started thinking about dinner?” I replied, “Maybe you are right about that.” So the conversation switched to styles of food.  We finally settled on a seafood restaurant that we both enjoyed and called a cab.

We ordered drinks and the talk began again. We had covered so much ground so fast that we felt like old friends by now.  More drinks with the excellent dinner and then we faced the next step, call it a day, or stay together for a while little longer.  I said that it had been a long week and that I really needed to shed my work clothes and settle into jeans and a tee and just relax. You instantly agreed and we decided on renting some videos and going to my place so I would have the “home ground”, so to speak.  You gave you my address to the cab driver after we’d gotten the videos and we had stopped on the way to my place for you to change clothes while I waited in the taxi.  I excused myself when we arrived at my apartment and did the same thing. Brushed out my hair and shrugged the week’s tension off as well as I could.

I kept a bottle of Jack Daniels, the best sipping whiskey there is, some so-so wines and Coronas and limes. The beer had been something I had acquired a taste for in Aruba when my girlfriend and I had taken our vacation last year. You asked for the beer and I got us two. While doing so, I also took a small shot of the Jack to quell the butterflies in my stomach.  We had picked two new releases and the first was a big disappointment. The second had been alright, but mostly we had just talked.  Half way through we had decided to just turn on some music and forget about the movies, which had proved to be far less than great. The Coronas, the conversation and feeling like we had truly met before led to you softly kissing my lips.  Just a small, light brush and then you opened your eyes to see my response. When you saw the small smile reach the corners of my lips you smiled and kissed me again.

We had already moved from the couch to the soft carpet on the floor because we had challenged the other to a game or two of Gin Rummy.  You made me laugh as you shyly smiled and changed the rules every time it was your deal.  I couldn’t help but laugh it was just too much fun. One game it would be hold the tenth card on your forehead with some tape and play the nine cards we held in our hands. The laughter became more consuming than the cards so we just stopped and you leaned over and kissed my lips. I kissed you back and we both felt the tiny start of a great French kiss. An absolute turn on when done just right.  The carpet was soft, but not inviting enough and you held out your hand and asked which way the bedroom was and I walked you down the hallway. Too many beers diverted you to the bathroom and I waited, showed you the bedroom and proceeded back to the bathroom myself.

When I had returned the comforter and blanket were turned down and you were just sitting on the bed looking lost. I sat down beside you and gave you a deep, lasting kiss, which was returned with equal intensity. With the kiss the hands started to roam and soon the clothes were scattered all over the floor, just thrown down as they had come off. You laid me down ever so gently and started kissing my breast, and I lightly put my hands in your hair.  The tingling sensation traveled all the way to my pussy and I could not keep the deep moan of pleasure back.  It all felt so good!  So much pleasure I had not felt in a very long time. You were good, a STUD: "Stunning, tasty, and utterly delicious!!!!" When I told you this you’d laughed but you were enjoying yourself just as I was. Deep, intense kisses and deep, intense trusts, I wanted all of you, everywhere at once and I could tell you wanted the same thing. The climax was intense and lasted at least five minutes with the small waves of feeling lasting longer than that.

We held each other tight until our regular breathing returned, then rolled off each other to lie on our sides and look into each others faces. At the same time we smiled and said, “I wonder if we can do the same each time?” At that we both cracked up and fell into each others arms. We held each other until we decided it was definitely shower time and we made our way to the bathroom. After getting the spray just right, we entered though the glass doors and we were in each others arms and kissing before a breath could be taken.

I told you after we met in the living room that you could get us two more Coronas and we would unwind. When I finished up in the bathroom, you had indeed set up the beers and waiting on my return. You had even found the limes and we proceeded to refresh are dry throats. I looked at you and asked, “You are planning on staying the night, there are more beers and….” You answered, “Of course, if you want me,” while a sly grin touched your face.  I laughed and you joined in.  We knew this was going to be the start of something really, really wonderful and the question had only been asked as a joke.

We finished the beers, took our turns in the bathroom and proceeded back to bed. One more glorious joint climax with you inside of me told all and we were finally exhausted and feel asleep to face the next day and more love.

We were married six months later and both of us agree we were meant to be together forever, we had finally found our "Happily Ever After" and both of us were happy and content for the rest of our years.” 

Later I found a site on the net where I could copyright my stories and that made everything more special.  Sam encouraged me to write adult love stories about my passion that I’d never been able to have in my marriage.  The accident had changed me and I was no longer the person I once was. I started swimming again and lost 40 pounds and I was in the best I had for years.  Depression puts on weight fast and I had been depressed for years, and years.  Even though the depression was still there, I was able to pushed it back in a corner, one I hoped it would stay in.

Chapter 8

The summer of 2003, a year after we’d met, his Mom died of a massage stroke without any warning signings at all. We would talk late into the night about his feelings about this and I watched him get more depressed and loosing weight after she passed away.  He had already told me he had lost his younger brother and sister while he was serving in the Air Force but he hadn’t gone into it any farther than to say they had died in a car accident.  When his Mom died he told me the rest of the story.  “My younger brother Chad, his girl friend Marie and my younger sister Jennifer all died in a car accident just after I’d been sent overseas with the Air Force.  They had found massive amounts of Alcohol and cocaine in all three of them and my 15 year old sister had the highest amount and was four months pregnant.”  His Dad had been a Captain on the police force and his life had fallen apart after all this.  He’d ended up getting shot in the line of duty and the family had been almost whipped out in less than nine months.  Sam was allowed leave for his father’s funeral but not for his brother and sister because he had just arrived at his post after boot camp.  It had taken years for Sam to recover from this loss but he had managed and now with his Mom gone too we talked a lot about this.  Sam needed to recover and talking things out with me helped him a lot.

So in the middle of October he rented a house and I got on an airplane and headed to Sarasota, Florida.  One layover after another kept me calling Sam and keeping him informed as to what City I was in or hadn’t left yet from.  I was really glad to have my MCI calling card because the calls were free and I’d put a lot of minutes on the card before I’d left.  We both were a little peeved but we also were insomniacs so I told Sam to take a nap, if he could, and I’d be along around 4 am.

When the plane finally touched down in Sarasota, and I met up with Sam, we hugged and walked out to his car. We were never at a loss for words and he had me laughing before we even left the parking lot. The first thing he did when we got to the house was kick off his shoes, and I said, “Oh, Good, a man after my own heart, I don’t wear shoes inside either.”  We kissed as we walked through the living room and into the bedroom, where we made love for the very first time.  We had been waiting for this moment for ages and it just felt right to fall into bed together.  Sam said, “It will get better in time,” and I said “It was be best I’d ever had and I was staying to the end; whenever that will be.”

We sleep until noon and then we started our daily ritual. We just comfortably settled into it with out really thinking about it.  I’d always make the coffee the night before so we could just plug it in when the first one got up. I’d also started giving him butterfly kisses around his neck, telling him that he’d never gotten the amount of love he deserved.  I felt this more and more as we talked and I knew it to be true.  He didn’t ever argue with that statement and the kisses progressed to include hugs as well.  When I served him his coffee I’d always rest my chin on his head and he’s learn back into me while I had my arms crossed upon his chest.  I explained that, “I needed to tell him everyday that I loved him and just how much he meant to me because you never know what tomorrow has in store for you.”  I told him it was a firm belief of mine to never let a day pass by that I hadn’t held him, kissed him and told him I loved him.  As it turned out that was just what we both needed.
He’d still have to go back on base to finish up the last of his service, but it was mostly paperwork and he was home a lot.  After about three months I sat on the floor while he was in his recliner and asked him to teach me just how he wanted to be made love to. Actually he wasn’t shocked; he just said no one had ever asked him that before. We got some help from a tape on “deep throat” and I watched it twice before trying it on my love.

In October he asked me to marry him of course I said yes.  Jack and Kim, he’d known Jack since the second grade, offered to let us get married at their house and also to hold the reception there.  It was just a small group of guests, but we really had a great time.  When Sam and I stood in front of the Priest and said our “I do’s” we both know that our marriage was going to last our lifetimes because our love was that great.  We then took off for Hawaii for the first part of our honeymoon and Jack and Kim took their vacation then too.  The four of us had a great time and then Jack had to get back to go back to work.  We then went on to Reno where we the spent three weeks traveling to Virginia City and Lake Tahoe as well as exploring Reno itself.  Sam fell in love with Virginia City just like I had years before.  We both loved the “Old West” feel of the place and loved the way it was when you turned a corner that you really felt like you had gone back in time to a century before. 

It was fun being in the old west but it also was time to go home.  The house we bought after we arrived back in Sarasota needed some fixing up to become our dream house.  It already had a Master bedroom with shower and a second bedroom and the kitchen faced the west.  Now we had to add our Patio, which we’d both been working on the plans for almost a year now.  We wanted to make the Patio the main living area of the house; complete with another Master Bedroom enclosed with a wall of glass bricks, a pool and a living room like area with couch, chairs and TV.  We expand the area next to the kitchen to hold a table and chairs, so it also became our dining area.  This made meals a snap and we spent most of our time on the patio as it was.  We had plenty of room for guests and we made the most of it.  A house warming party when we moved in; joke gifts galore and lots of laughs, then a Halloween party with just Jack and Kim.  Kim and I always swapped Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  Even with the kids and grandkids coming there was always room at our table for everyone.  Kim and I would really do up the patio for Thanksgiving and for Christmas the tree was in the regular living room of the house with the biggest, fullest tree we could find.  Their two girls were by this time grown up and the eldest, Megan, already had two children.  Mike was a good husband for her.  Then Marcia met Scott and they had their first child.  This made Christmas a really lovely time of the year with all the kids around.  Sam and I had never been able to have children so this more than made up for that.

Sarasota was just my idea of what a sea coast city should be like.  Lots of small shops plus a store for groceries and even a shopping center with quite a few of the larger department stores, what more could anyone want?  I also found out that Stephen King lived on an island just off the coast on the gulf, and I attended all of the book signings I could get to and was happy as a clam.  Sam and I loved walking around the city and window shopping because we needed so little to compliment our home, but once in a while we would find interesting pieces to add and that was always fun. 

Sam started painting and his pictures were really good.  He had a showing in Sarasota and was starting to make a name for himself.  I had started painting flower pots with flowers and designs years ago and was able to sell a few of them in the local shops.  One winter we rented a house on the Florida Keys and opened “Rhode’s Gallery”.  For three months we did very well and he sold a lot of paintings.  It seemed like people couldn’t get enough of his paintings and even though he was painting while we were there he almost ran out of pictures to sell.  It was a great adventure and we planned on repeating it the next year.

After returning home Sam and I took too a great vacation at a Dude Ranch.  Carlton’s Dude Ranch was an all-inclusive resort.  Horseback riding during the day and great food and a full bar for dinner, what more could you ask for?  The setting sun off our patio there was just fantastic, all orange and reds turning to purples before the sun finally left the sky.  We’d sip Coronas with line and watch the sunsets in all their glory.  We both loved horses so this was a wonderful place to be.  But we loved our home even more and never could stay away for long. 

Chapter 9

Sam wore this after shave called Paul Sebastian and it would drive me wild.  It must have been just the right combination of pheromones and I couldn’t keep my hands off him, which he really didn’t mind at all because he’d always have a sly smile on his face when he used just a little too much.  I’d play on the computer mostly on Pogo and on my Legend of the Green Dragon sites.  Sam was my knight in Shinning Armor from the beginning of the creation of my clan on one of these sites where I played. (Really he’d been my Knight in Shinning Armor for longer than that.)  I even wrote that the first thing you saw when you pushed open the double oaken doors into the manor of the clan hall was a suit of armor with a name tag, reading “Sam”. 

The Dragon Knights of Camelot, we bid you Welcome.

“As you enter the front door of the castle the first thing you see is a life size suit of shinning armor, with a wooden tag around his neck that just says "Sam".  Sam really is my Knight in Shinning Armor, he’s renewed my faith in God and he’s a truly good hearted soul.  Beside our Guardian Angel on the wall is our Motto: "The Dragon Knights of Camelot are built on the foundation of Honesty and Integrity. When you give your word it MEANS something here."  He liked what I had said and like me, believed that Honesty and Integrity were really important to a good life.

I became his nurse and his Geisha Girl almost immediately and he’d always call for me to wash his back. This was extremely enjoyable for both of us since I could tease him a little too and it made us feel even closer to each other.

On Thursday nights we always ate pizza because that was the night “Survivor’ was on. But I’d always made a salad and also kept him well stocked in cake donuts, his favorite. As far as we were concerned, we had the perfect relationship.  Both of us had trouble with insomnia and stayed up late and slept in most mornings.  We loved our life and our home and never strayed far from either.

It felt so nice after so many years of bad relationships that I never took one day for granted.  I loved Sam in every way possible; making him feel like a king, because he was my king and my knight in shinning armor.  Loving him and being loved by him was the best thing that that ever happened in my life.  We entertained, traveled but it was always each other that we treasured the most.  We talked about everything, more so, it seemed than other couples.  Nothing was really not discussed and spoken of.  This made our relationship all the more interesting.  As the years past our lives just grew stronger. 
We believed in the motto that was being sent, year after year, on the internet:

“Everything Happens for a Reason

1. I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.

2. No man or woman is worth your tears, and the one who is, won't make you cry.

3. Just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to, doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

4. A true friend is someone that reaches for your hand and touches your heart.

5. The worst way to miss someone is to be sitting right beside them knowing you can't have them.

6. Never frown, even when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.

7. To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

8. Don't waste your time on a man/woman, who isn't willing to waste their time on you.

9. Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one, so that when we finally meet the person, we will know how to be grateful.

10. Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened.

11. There's always going to be people that hurt you so what you have to do is keep on trusting and just be more careful about who you trust next time around.

12. Make yourself a better person and know who you are before you try and know someone else and expect them to know you.

13. Don't try so hard, the best things come when you least expect them to.

REMEMBER: WHATEVER HAPPENS HAPPENS FOR A REASON.”

So much of it was true and so very straight forward that we had adopted it as our motto when we met.  Just simple rules to live by that we both found to have great meaning in them. 

My back did start hurting me more and more as time went on and we’d explore ways to control the pain.  I started taking Aloe Vera caplets and this helped for quite a while.  Then I had knee surgery to correct the torn ligament that was making my left hip hurt no matter what I did.  Narcotics were something I really didn’t want the Doctor to get me started on.  I wanted to live life, not be dependant on pills.  Sam was slowing down too; the years just seem to catch up with you, no matter how hard you try to keep them at bay.  We started staying closer and closer to home it seemed.  We started taking more drives than walking after a while and visited a lot of Florida and the adjoining states as well.  Life was good.

Life went on like this for quite a few years until we both started slowing down.  We could not imagine living without the other and not having the other to share our thoughts and desires with.  We loved our house and our travels but more and more it was doing things over and over again.  We would try and think of things that we’d like to do just to find that we had already done them a few times already. 

Neither of us wanted to see more of Europe than Scotland, Ireland, England and Italy where we had spent a week in each country and found that to be more than long enough.  We were content to have traveled to these wonderful places but home was where we wanted to be, just home in our lovely house with each other for company.