My Grief

Finally, the memorial plaque for Julie is in place in the Northern Suburbs Crematorium gardens, with her ashes in an urn behind the plaque inside the wall. So that’s another loose end tied up.

When I took Daniel out to see it last weekend, I was expecting to have to deal with his emotions, but it turned out that I was in more pain at that time than he seemed to be.

In my last entry on 23rd of May, I wrote about how I wrote a letter to my first high school crush. This has been significantly dominating my thoughts ever since. I seem powerless to make the thoughts go away. Either she must be my next wife or there must be some certainty about her unsuitability for that, or she must be certain that she doesn't want that. As it currently stands, I couldn't even consider a romance with anyone else while there was even the slightest possibility of a relationship with her. Even if there was less than a one in a hundred chance of anything happening between us, I could not move on.

If she is in a relationship with someone else, than that would be bad for me, but at least I would be able to move on. The worst-case scenario would be if she wanted to have a relationship with me but she wasn't a Christian. I am desperately praying that if she is not a Christian that she shows no interest in me. I am, of course, praying harder that she be a Christian. I feel very guilty, because if I'm honest with myself, I will confess that my wish for her to be a Christian is more to do with my desire for a relationship with her than for her eternal destiny. Not that I'm indifferent about her eternal destiny.

The first contact made with her since high school was in 2001 when I was part of the organising committee for the twenty year high school reunion. She was on the “Missing” list, and I went out of my way to find her. I even went to her former next-door neighbour and explained about the reunion and how we couldn't find her, and they kindly gave me the contact details for her parents who were living in Barrington.

With great nervousness, I phoned and spoke to her father. His tone of voice betrayed a certain suspicion that I was up to no good, but it seemed that he eventually gave me the benefit of the doubt, and revealed to me her phone number. The nervousness I felt when I phoned her father was nothing compared to the nervousness involved in actually phoning her. I had one chance to impress, and one stupid word would have left an indelible mark. It was a stupid thought really. I was married to Julie at that time, with no intention of being unfaithful, and yet this was the first girl I ever really liked in that way. I needed to see her, to find out how she was and know what she was doing.

There was little said during that phone call. I did discover that she'd been married to a Columbian man and had children with him, but was now divorced and living in the tiny town of Barrington, not in the same house, but in the same town as her parents.

One email came to me which was sent by her six months after she received the official invitation to the reunion. It was friendly enough, but said little about her.

I wrote another email after the reunion to her to tell her how our reunion went, and she replied to that. Then, out of the blue, two days later, she sent a photograph of herself with two friends at her high school reunion. The photograph was a bit dark, and didn't show much detail, but it did show that she was still very attractive.

I'd had no contact with her since then, but she was regularly in my thoughts, particularly when my marriage was going poorly.

So now, as I've already written, I've sent her a letter, telling her how I feel about her. I was eagerly awaiting her reply, when on Wednesday, the letter came back marked “Return To Sender: Left Address / Unknown”.

I didn't want to send an email because it seemed too impersonal, but I was left with no choice. I had no other way to contact her. So I sent an email to the last known address I had for her, and had to wait until the next day for the reply. Again, the reply was friendly and jovial, but told me nothing about herself. The email did reveal that she'd moved from Barrington to Armidale some years ago. The main thing was that she told me her new street address. So the original letter was re-sent, this time Express Post so that I knew it would arrive on Friday.

With today being the Monday following that, the suspense is killing me. I am desperate to get a reply.

I know that I'm being a fool. I know that the chance of this working out to become what I would like it to be is extremely remote. But what if it did somehow work?