“. . . . we talked and shared our experiences as if we were in the same room and had never been apart. . . .”
Yes, it can be heart breaking when somebody close to you suddenly dies. This can happen at any stage in life, but especially, when you’re very elderly already!
It was the end of the 1950’s. I was seventeen, in the Upper Sixth of the Grammar School. A gangly, spotty lad, and something of a lone wolf. Not much use on the football field and even less on the cricket pitch. Books were my escape, birdwatching my hobby.
Ours was a mixed school, but I was invisible to the girls and so I decided to let them be invisible to me. There were occasional exchanges of course, but on the whole nobody would have noticed if I hadn’t been there. Sometimes, that came in useful and I’d skip a particularly boring class so I could hide in the library, which was quiet and peaceful and I could lose myself in other worlds.
It was on such a day, when I was trying to think of something sagacious to write in my essay, that I became aware of a girl…
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AuntyUta 
This story sounds so very true to me, Cat. 🙂
When I was 17, I did fall in love for the first time. He was 19, and we met at an evening class, studying Spanish! 🙂
I also think, it is possible to have a beautiful relationship on the internet for one whole year without ever making an effort to meet each other in the flesh. 🙂
Especially in old age, any effort of meeting in the flesh may come too late, if you leave it for too long! 🙂
Thank you for re-blogging this, Uta – the story is fiction, inspired by fact (after all, I was never a 17-year-old boy!) with some dramatic twists from me 🙂
Yes, I believe most good fiction is somehow inspired by fact. I do not think, that anybody would have thought, that you were once a boy!
I regarded my 19-year-0ld lover not as a boy, but as a young man. I still think, ours was true love. That we could not stay together, was beyond our control. Last time I very briefly and secretely was able to talk to him, was in July of 1953. I don’t know, what happened to him after that.
So we met in the spring of 1952. After two months we were forced to separate. Since we never got to having sex, I was not pregnant or anything like this.
In the spring of 1953 I did fall in love with a very nice looking guy who was not quite 18 yet, in other words, about nine months younger than me. I must say, as much as I may have wished it, he never did fall in love with me! Still, we were good friends for well over a year.
Peter claims, when he first saw me in May 1955, he straight away thought, that I was the right girl for him. When, after a few weeks, he saw me again, he made sure, he could contact me. After a few dates, I started to like him too. And the rest is history. We got married on the 21st of December 1956, when I was already four weeks pregnant! Sadly, Peter died a few days before our 64th Wedding Anniversary.
Now, if I would write a fictional story about seeing my first love again in old age, I could write about finding out, that he lived in Berlin, and that I would plan on seeing him there. We would arrange for a meeting on a certain date. But he would get so excited about it, that he would have a stroke and die, before I could see him.
How does that sound? Well, it is fiction of course. But I could also write, how we loved each other when he was 19 and I was 17, and that would be the truth! –
Peter first saw me at a dancing school, where we learned ballroom dancing. His best friend was with him! This friend seemed not to like it, that Peter and I became an item. (I think he would have liked to have some chances with me.) However, over the years he always continued to be a good friend to Peter and also to me.
When I first saw Peter, he had just turned 20. Eight months later I turned 21. I celebrated my 21st birthday with Peter at my auntie’s place.
Hi Aunty.
I wanted to send a comment to catterel, apropos your reblogging of her beautifully written piece, but I don’t seem to be able to go direct.
Nothing so touching as love lost, love rediscovered after decades and then the tragic ending.
I’m reminded of the Buddhist concept of dukkha – roughly translated as dissatisfaction- that life is ultimately unsatisfactory – it always ends badly. Not sure whether to laugh or cry at this stage.
Kind regards,
Mike (aka Therese Trouserzoff)