So Sorry to Say Goodbye
Barry proposed to me the summer before I was a senior in high school. I was proud to wear my engagement ring but it was weird, not many girls in high school were engaged.
I went to Grants Pass for his high school graduation. The night before graduation, I stayed in his parents’ ranch-style house painted yellow with white trim, I liked the color combination, it looked neat and clean. I slept in his bedroom and he slept on the living room couch. While his family was still asleep, he sneaked into his room for us to have sex. We were startled when we heard his family getting up, the interruption was frustrating for us. As I sat on the grandstands with his family and watched the ceremony it felt like the beginning and the end.
He went directly to the Navy base in San Diego. Before he left his mom suggested we get married, her logic was I would get financial support as his wife. Her idea was for Barry and I to go to church and wait until after the regular service then go before the congregation to say our vows, plain and simple. But I wanted a big wedding, wedding dress, maid of honor, bridesmaids, best man, groomsmen, flowers, and a three-tiered wedding cake. We decided to wait, but we didn’t set an actual date.
When he was on leave, he spent most of his leave time at our house. He slept on our couch. It was a fun time for me and my sisters, we played board games and laughed at silly jokes. Barry and I enjoyed exploring our farm. He carved our initials in the Laurel on the back of our property, just like I wanted when I was ten.
We drove my VW around and enjoyed the independence it gave us. We did everything together, we had root beer floats at the A&W and Pete’s Drive-In was famous for their homemade French fries. We went to church together, walked around my high school campus, and took long walks around our property and down Calkins Road to the river. We watched Gizmo our mallard duck, and went to the drive-in movies. He even tried milking my cow, Blue. Whatever we did we loved spending our time together and we had plenty of time for romance, namely sex, when we were out in my car after dark. One night we parked at Cleveland Hill Beach and a sheriff’s car pulled up close to my VW, but just before he got there Barry told me to put on his shirt to cover my naked body, quick thinking I thought. The officer got out of the car and said through the open car window “Time for you kids to go home.” We did.
One morning Barry and I were in the bathroom brushing our teeth. Mom thought we were becoming too familiar, especially there. She made arrangements with a lady from church who rented out rooms. He spent the nights at her house but we still spent the greater part of our days and nights together. Those are fond memories of when we truly got to spend time together.
When his two-year stint in the Navy was up, he joined the Marines. He trained to be a medic thinking he would be useful in the Vietnam War. I was grateful he wasn’t deployed. While he was in basic training in Barstow, California he visited my aunt Molly. She told me later that she didn’t think he was right for me. She didn’t offer details, and I didn’t ask.
His base was in Okinawa. I didn’t know where it was except that it was very, very far away. Long distance calls were extra expensive so we didn’t call each other, but kept our romance alive by writing letters back and forth.
Somewhere along the way, his mom decided to oppose our marriage. She began a series of lies. Barry said, his mom said, “I was filled with the devil,” because of a spiritual belief I held. That I was attending the wrong Baptist church convention, whatever that meant.
She called me to report that Barry bought an expensive motorcycle. It bothered me he was spending that kind of money when I was making payments on my $200.00 VW and $20.00 payments for pots, pans, and dishes for us to use when we got married. She also said he was seeing whores. I thought she had no way of knowing what her son had been doing sexually unless he told her. Her lies were her way of making sure our marriage wouldn’t happen. I started to see why he called his parents the “parents from hell.”
After what Molly and his mother said about him, I felt I had to say goodbye to Barry. There were too many conflicting stories and things he shouldn’t have repeated, like when his cousin said I wasn’t good enough for Barry. I’d heard of writing a “Dear John,” letter. When a girl tells her boyfriend their romance is over. I never thought I’d write one but with mounting rejection, I felt I had no choice. I wrote the letter. We didn’t talk on the phone or exchange any letters afterward. I sent back my engagement ring. I always wondered if he sold it or threw it in the ocean of regret.
When he was out of the service he called my mom time after time, he wanted to see me. Finally, she gave him my phone number. When he called I agreed to meet to meet at the Tom-Tom restaurant. I was apprehensive because I was dating someone, but I went anyway. Barry was waiting at a table, we made some small talk then he reached his hands across the table and said “Baby, we can make it.” He asked if I’d come alone, and I said yes. He showed me how the tattoo he had, my name on pink cloud, had been surgically removed. It scared me that he would do something so drastic. I can still picture him walking away as mad as ever.
In all that, I came to realize the sovereignty of God and that he possibly had a different direction or a different plan for my life. God knew me before I was formed in the womb who my husband, my children, and my grandchildren would be. God would do the same for Barry and his own family. I knew God had a plan even if I didn’t understand what it was going to be.
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