Time Traveler

 

He wore the shoes of a time traveler.  I hadn’t noticed at first, but looking back, there were several obvious clues I should have picked up on.

By the time Mary had passed from cancer, he was already seeing life from the inside of a vodka bottle.  Life had beaten him down, you could see it.  Without her, he didn’t want to continue. 

He never removed her greeting from their answering machine.  Always an upbeat, English accent made it sound as if she’d never left.  “Hello Love.  Leave your message and we’ll call you back.”

I was there when they first met.  It was in a nightclub in Madrid, Spain.  The music was way too loud, the dance floor crowded and the drinks, I’m not sure why, seemed to glow in the dark.  From that evening forward they were never apart.

They settled in California and raised a family, all the while she was going through treatment, traveling to Germany for experimental attempts at a cure.  Even with a simple scarf covering her missing hair, she smiled and kept moving forward.  It was somehow appropriate that he was a fireman, as his entire existence had been an emergency.

I remember their mailbox, out at the sidewalk, was a model of a fire truck.  Over the years we kept in touch, even going on a few vacations together.  He finally retired from the fire department, and about once a year they would travel back to her hometown in England to visit her family.  We’d always get a postcard or letter from her.

The last time we saw him, we almost didn’t recognize him.  He had gone so far into the bottle that he appeared distorted, like we were seeing him through the curved glass, sadly worn and a little slurred.  His spark had been extinguished years ago.  He would give us updates on the children but no longer spoke of Mary.  She was the missing spark.

I began this by describing him as a time traveler, and I believe he is.  They both are.  They are an unforgettable couple, who occupied a space in our lives that lives on to this day.  Even though their answering machine is long gone, we can still hear it.

  “Hello Love.”