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URBANNA — The emotional love poem that Peter had written and shared with me describing his feelings for his lost love introduced me to inter-gender romantic love. I was 33. In those years, human sexuality was learned at one’s own speed as schools did not teach the subject as is done today.
But there were other forms of love, too, the Platonic affection and concern I felt for him, certainly, the love we feel for our fellow man, our neighbors and friends.
It is a love that is color and gender blind, accepts others without judgment, loves regardless of differences, loves simply because we are human and the rare animals in the great kingdom that are capable of various types of love.
I had no illusions. Fifty years ago, it was a very different world. I worried as my young friend prepared to become a priest that there would be great challenges ahead. I wished I could help him in some way but no matter how I reflected on the hurdles he would surely face, I could think of no way I could be of help. A nagging fear for him remained.
Summer camp came to a close. There was a rumor among the counselors that the owner was thinking of selling the camp. I understood the ongoing liability must have been tremendous, all those children so busy every summer with so many activities, and suppose a child was hurt or even worse, suppose there were a death?
It was time to pack our belongings and head back to Florida. My children and I were tanned and rested and happy from the fun and adventures we had experienced. But it was time to go home.
Peter and I hugged goodbye and promised to write and to return next summer. As I drove away and saw his slight figure slowly disappear, I thought of his lines from his beautiful poem…
“I watched him as he waved and went away,
I couldn’t think of anything to say,
My trembling lips portrayed my silent fears,
My eyes were blind with overflowing tears…”
As I drove south I prayed silently that Peter would be safe in the coming years. The poem continued in my mind, all the time my children, Liz and Wake, laughing with happy memories in the back seat …
“I turned and stumbled off to bed,
The night was dark and filled me with such dread,
The memory of him guided me along,
The love I felt for him had made me strong …”
“Are we there yet, Mother?” came from the back seat. The eternal question that all children ask when traveling in a car had started. But I was still deep in thought of Peter’s telling poem …
“And now he’s gone, I miss him so.
At heights of grief the world will never know, His glow of love will never touch me more,
He’s gone. I must remember from before …”
We stopped at Blowing Rock, N.C., for a few days where my in-laws from Newport News were spending their summer vacation. On arrival, I immediately heard the shocking news that my teenage idol, Elvis Presley, had died, possibly from a drug overdose, at age 42. I was devastated, suddenly feeling unstable and alone in a growingly hostile world where only misery and death awaited.
My in-laws and their friends laughed at my grief. “The King is dead!” A doctor friend of the family teased me every time I came into the room triggering a great amount of laughter from his generation. They seemed amused at my despair. I finally realized the more I showed my suffering over Elvis’ death, the more I would be teased.
I did what we all must learn to do as we travel through life, and what makes a writer finally turn to his pen for relief. People can be cruel over other people’s suffering. They don’t mean to be cruel, they simply don’t have the same degree of sensitivity as others.
So to protect myself, I hid my feelings. The usual trick, learned long ago, I put on a merry face to fit in with the group. Only to have my feelings pop out of my head now … like long ago discarded seeds planted in the dark earth of my brain, and now finally germinated … 50 years after planted, and now in full bloom.
And how good it is to write today about how much I and so many others in my generation suffered over so many discoveries in our young lives … and especially how we agonized over the death of the king.
(Continued next week.)
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