FROM IN LIKE TO IN LOVE

I keep finding these things.  One day last week it was a note that Gwen had written to me, entirely in shorthand.  She had written the note while we were studying together in the library at what was then Northern Michigan College, it is now a university.  She was in her second year as a business major and I was in my last semester before beginning student-teaching as a business teacher.  We both knew shorthand, she was way better at it than I.  Although I taught shorthand to farm kids in the U. P. 48 years ago, I don't remember a word of it now.

The longer I live, the more convinced I become that there are no coincidences.  I have been attending a bereavement group sponsored by the hospice that served Gwen and me.  A member of that group is someone I know through church who recently lost her husband.  In our conversations I had learned that she teaches shorthand at a local community college.  Lo and behold, I find this note, in shorthand, from Gwen, and my friend Marie volunteers to transcribe it for me.  It was close to 50 years ago, but as I read Marie's transcription of Gwen's note, I remembered with total clarity that night with Gwen in the library.  I'm listening to some "Oldies" music as I type this, the song being played right now is the old Jimmy Dean song, Big Bad John.  Gwen's note is addressed to me as Big Bad John.  True, it just happened.  Sure makes it easier to believe in miracles.

When I read the note she wrote that night so long ago I get a mixture of feelings that is part complete emptiness and sadness and part profound joy at  remembrances of our young love.  And it was very, very young, it could not have been more than three months since we had first met.  The weekend before we had attended a party, and, without going into too much detail, afterward we had connected at a physical level that left no doubt that there was something special, almost electric between us.  This is what she talks about in her note.  Powerful stuff indeed.  What a gift to have this tangible reminder (It's in her own handwriting, more correctly, shorhandwriting.) of such a tender period in our love.

I suppose it could be argued that  it's unhealthy to come upon these reminders of something that was so long ago and fixate on them.  I don't think so.  Just today I came across some Jello cups in the pantry, lime Jello with pineapple in it. Gwen loved it, and I had stocked up on it just before she died.  My remembrances of how much she enjoyed it as I fed her that Jello are no less tender and visceral than are the ones of that night in the library at Northern almost 50 years ago.  Today, in the New York Times BOOK REVIEW,  two books authored by grieving widows were reviewed.  One by Joyce Carol Oates and the other by Michelle Latiolais.  I can't bring myself to read those kinds of books yet.  My own grief is still so beyond my grasp and understanding that I can't find the energy or time or, indeed, the desire to want to read about the grief of another. I can listen to others tell me about their grief, I just can't read about it.  It's their grief, not mine.  If I've learned anything since Gwen's death it's that grief is totally personal.

 Where am I going with this?  Oh, yes.  A quote from the book by Michelle Latiolais caught my eye:  "One wants what one has loved," she writes, "not the idea of love."   The young, tender love that Gwen and I shared in the library that night is the one I miss and want, and it is no different in substance or meaning in my life than is the love we shared as I spooned green Jello with pineapple into her mouth four months ago.  That's what grief is like, missing all of that.

Three of Gwen's best friends from high school have invited me into correspondence with them.  As is the case with all things having to do with her past,  it is such a joy to have them introduce me to the Gwen I didn't know.  One of these friends told me about a letter she had gotten from Gwen telling her about me and that she had "fallen in like" with me and that she knew it would only get better.  It sure did, and that was what was going on when she wrote the note in the library.  I don't think my poem does it justice, it only gives a flavor of what that beautiful moment was like:

FROM IN LIKE TO IN LOVE

Northern Michigan College

 is printed at the top of the paper

The rest of it is in shorthand.

My friend Marie teaches shorthand

at the community college.

She transcribed the note for me.

Here’s what it said.

Tuesday night, 8:30

the two of us, sitting at a table

studying in the library

one of our first dates.

She wonders, in shorthand,

what I’m thinking about.

About her specifically.

She says I give her too much

to think about.

Let’s talk about John and Gwen, she says,

Remember last weekend?

How could I have forgotten, she asks?

I’m confused, don’t know what to think.

I remember last  weekend.

Remember it exactly, the night we fell in love.

(Around that time

she had written this to a friend:

I’m “in like” with John,

and it will only get better.)

There, that night, in the library;

 she knew it had gotten better.

We had fallen in love.

That kind of news takes some getting used to.

The last shorthand symbol she wrote in that note

is the one that means yours.

She knew.

John A. Bayerl, February 21, 2011

I miss the one who wrote me the note about new love, not the idea of that love.  Ideas can't keep me warm on a snowy Sunday night. Thank you for the shorthand note you wrote that night in the library, Sweetie, and now I'm going to have some green Jello with pineapple in it.