I woke up in be next to my lovely wife and glanced at the alarm clock — 3:30 am, October 31 — Halloween. Neither my wife nor I celebrate Halloween, but we don’t judge those who do. That wasn’t always the case. Both of us celebrated it with gusto when we were younger, dressing up for parties and trick or treating.
But not anymore. Only two people know why and one of them is currently laying next to me. I haven’t told anyone else because frankly, they’d probably think I was crazy.
Let me start at the beginning. My name is Jim Patterson. My wife and I come from a small town in rural Kentucky. It’s a very tight, close-knit community that revolves around two things — the coal mines and church.
My father worked in the mines until he died in a tunnel collapse. The community came together and helped my mother get on her feet. That’s just the way things were in those days. Our pastor, Bob, became something of a surrogate father to me and helped us out tremendously. His wife frequently came by the house with food or other offers of help, which my mother accepted graciously.
I decided I wanted to do something other than work in the mines and joined the service after I graduated from high school. Bob supported my decision, telling me that a man has to do what he thinks is right. Jenny, the girl I loved since childhood, felt the same way and went to college back east to become a nurse. We promised to stay in touch with each other and get back together in four years to see where our relationship would go, or if there was any relationship at all. In our community, a promise was as good as gold.
It was a tearful goodbye for both of us. The night before we went our separate ways, we gave our bodies to each other and promised to love each other for all time.
Two years later, I was given a medical discharge after being wounded in Iraq. After my discharge, I went to school in California and got a two-year degree in networking and computer science. I also spent a great deal of time in physical therapy and that’s where I met Marissa.
What happened with Jenny, you ask. Good question. It turned out Jenny had met a medical student and the two of them were talking marriage. He proposed to her after I returned from Iraq and she accepted. She informed me of this in a long letter that was full of apologies and platitudes of unending friendship. I was glad she found someone, but was heartbroken at the same time.
Marissa figured out the basics and began working on me. It took a while, but eventually, I fell for her. Yeah, I still thought about Jenny, and we wrote each other a few times but Marissa had managed to take Jenny’s place in my heart. Before I knew it, she had me moved into her condo, which saved me quite a bit on rent.
Having been raised in church, I tried to find a church I could call “home,” but was unsuccessful. None of them had the feel of the old country church I was used to. The pastors all seemed to be full of themselves, and the parishioners all acted like they were in some kind of competition to see who could act the holiest.
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