Too Late?

A woman is pursuing me.

She will not let up. Try as I may to give her the cold shoulders, she ‘attacks’ from another angle.

We met again by chance and although my pulse raced with joy initially, my desire was to take things slowly. She waited for a few months and then she struck. “It’s time to talk,” was the sum total of the very public message she sent.

Angry that she aired our business so publicly without my consent I shot back a long message to her, detailing not only my vexation but venting my residual baggage.

Then she went silent and for weeks I heard nothing in response.

Yesterday, another Sunday in solitude as my husband is away, a response finally popped up on my laptop.

“You have been on my mind,” she wrote.

I read her words with a heart as cold as the early winter in Southern Alberta. There was no apology in her letter. She said she did not feel she had anything to say sorry about, except that she has loved me for so long.

“Too late for us…” was my terse response to her. “I have no time to waste.”

Who could blame me? I was not the one who walked away without a backward glance. How many years have gone by and nothing from her and now through one email she thought everything was okay?

“Ridiculous!” I thought. “It requires much more than that.”

How many sleepless nights over the years I have spent, praying and wishing for even a word, a card, something, anything that would say she loved me?

The pain and suffering endured at the hands of friends, lovers and strangers alike with no one to turn to but my shadow, my sad reflection in the mirror.

And now that my heart – battered, broken, shattered – is slowly healing through the Grace of God and with the love of my daughter, husband and dear friends, she turns up and wants a piece of me?

Hang on…hold it…wait a second…."Could this be part of God’s Grace?"

That thought flickered through my mind only momentarily. My fingers moved faster. I drummed out another cold response. I was getting better at this – hardening my heart towards this woman and all she presented.

As I drove home from work today, a CD of songs that I want played at my eventual Memorial Service was on. I had made it years ago, in another place, in another time.

“It is well with my soul, it is well, it is well, with my soul…”

Really? The Voice in my heart asked.

Then why are there a couple empty places…spots quietly earning to be held, softly and gently...wanting...no still needing to be healed?

Why did you cry yourself back to sleep last night after awakening from a dream that felt so real? Why does that face that you only now see in dreams appeared last night sharing with you her struggles, her pain and asking to be understood.

“Ping!” my laptop gave out as it announced the arrival of a new message. It was another from her.

To be continued.



Photo by Renato Gandia