Thoughts and Writings from the furnace by Kent Weathersby

Time Travel

Prompted by something she had seen on social media, Mary Ann recently asked me if I could remember at least three lines from movies or books that were so iconic that one could identify their source when hearing or reading them- Easy:

“Go ahead, make my day!” I love the smell of napalm in the morning!” and “We’ll Always Have Paris.”

I didn’t mention the passage that years ago was inscribed on my heart where it will remain until my last. The words appear on a page from within the 1992 best seller, “Bridges of Madison County” written by Robert James Walker— “In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many Lifetimes you live.”

By the time you reach 80 as I have, it has dawned upon you that your life is not a single life at all but rather a series of lifetimes. Each is a story of its own defined by the people and events that appear between the prologue and the epilogue of each.

Some lifetimes are sweet and as fragrant as a gardenia in bloom. Some are filled with glory days and peaceful nights. Some are rigorous and daunting and even crippling with grief and loss. And then there are the ones you wish you could tear from their bindings never to travel there again.

If only I hadn’t made that proposal to take a break from each other and date other people for a while, I wouldn’t have these bouts of dishrag heart that lay in wait to pounce whenever I hear “In The Still of the Night” or some other anthem of my darkest lifetime. For years I have revisited, reinterpreted, and evaded that decision. I probably always will. But if I had persevered in loyalty and not climbed that hill expecting to find greener grass, I would not have the certainty that I am married to the finest woman I have ever known, that I am undeservedly and immeasurably fortunate to have her, and that the Grace of Jesus Christ can only be measured according to the distance between east and west.

“Our lives are better left to chance,

I could have missed the pain

but I’d have had to miss the dance.”

Kent