A Rose by any other name…

I make it a point not to mention her in this blog… though you probably wouldn’t know it, seeing as how I have over a dozen times since we started. This is supposed to be about the life that Vicky and I share together. So, you’ll forgive me if I do, because it is, and we should because we do also.

Anyway…

I found it by accident. You probably won’t believe that but it’s true. Her MySpace page (the last resort for the pedophile and the sexually-repressed twelve-year-old) doesn’t even bear her name. Not only is last name different, so is the first. She took her gay lover’s last name and as for the first…

I’m lazy. Just try to swallow that. Instead of saying complete names, I often fall into the horrible habit of shortening them. I call Vicky “Vic”. I call Tim… well, “Tim”. And I used to call my first wife “Rose”. I guess it stuck, because that’s what she’s calling herself on the MySpace page.

Yep. There she was, in a picture so idyllic Normal Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better one were he hopped up on X. Oh, sure. She may be completely in denial but that’s not the point. And I didn’t realize that until I spent the entire day dwelling on it.

Does it matter that her gay lover is, well, gay? Or that her motto to have no regrets is abominable considering all the things she has done that are regrettable? Or that she spouts the importance of friendship, a woman who turned her back on her oldest friend when she died? Not really.

It was easy for me to think that’s what this was all about. But, honestly, that’s a different life. If she’s in denial, that’s her business. Frankly, I hope she lives a happy and full life. All that really concerned me was how seeing her face again affected me. And it did affect me, I’m not going to lie and say it didn’t. I don’t think I’ll ever fully shake the loss I experienced.

So, I sat and I thought about it.

Here’s what I decided.

She’s in Oregon now and I wish her the best. My life really has changed since I lost her because, somehow, so have I. The chains that once tied her to me are like gossamer, and as quickly as I stumbled on her MySpace page, I was able to close it down.

But, more importantly, I realized something that has been with me all along. I learned a lot of lessons from “Rose”, and they made me more able to be a better husband with “Vic”. And I looked at the pictures on that MySpace page, pictures of her taken only months or weeks ago, and I realized – as I always do – that I never held her enough, that I never kissed her enough, that I never showed her how much I loved nearly as much as I could.

There’s nothing I can do about that now. But I know someone who deserves my devotion so much more, and I should never forget what it feels like to lose the woman you love – it reminds me how important it is that I show Vicky how much I love her and hold her and kiss her every day.

One day, like it or not, I’ll lose Vicky. All I can do is try to make it as far in the future as possible, and make sure that in all the days between I show her how loved she is.

So, we went out for sushi tonight, and I rubbed her back. We came home and I kissed her. We went upstairs and… well, you can’t do that enough, either.