Sometimes looking to the past does not bring resolution . . .

When I was not quite twenty, I got married.  To a man who was, like me, a virgin, a Democrat, a lover of ballet & the theatre & old black & white movies.  He also loved to grow mushrooms & gardening & camping (I did not share his affection for camping.)  

And he had a hairy chest.

I have always been a sucker for a hairy chest.

He was a graduate of the University of Texas (a finance major) who believed that UT gave one a liberal education, Texas A&M gave one a conservative education & the University of Houston was an amazing happy median between the two.

Our courtship & engagement were all too brief, & ill advised.  Even then, there were warning signs that would have caused an older & more experienced Jaki Jean to flee for self protection.

His mother, who was, in her way, an amazing survivor of a difficult childhood, called me “Peggy” – his ex-girlfriend’s name.  For a long time.  I feared she would call me Peggy at the wedding.  His parents were older – married older, waiting seven years for their first son & seven more for my husband.  They were already retired, their lives revolving around golf & bridge & Sunday brunch at the Country Club & their granddaughter. 

And for my mother-in-law, around her youngest son.

The warning signs that the too young to get married Jaki Jean did not decipher began to manifest themselves.  I choose not to relate the details – I believe my ex-husband has children & I think the details would hurt them if they ran across this post.

For me, those details made our marriage unsustainable.  So I called my friend Susie Morley, who was living in Austin & she handed the phone to Elizabeth Bacon, her friend & co-worker, who told me she would call her lawyer mother Mary Bacon to assist me in getting a low cost, uncontested divorce.

Mary Bacon, who later became a judge, handled my divorce for $250.00. 

Yesterday, frustrated by the elections & Brussels & all the terrorist attacks the media does not report, I ran across an old journal from my five year marriage.

Every Christmas, my husband would give me a Kahlil Gibran journal, blank pages with quotes from Gibran.  I picked one up out of a box & did not recognize the young Jaki Jean who wrote about a man she loved.  Planning a meal with candles.

So, I goggled my ex. 

He died recently at 65. 

He was four years older & would be 66 at the end of June (he was born a few minutes after  midnight on June 30, but his mother insisted the doctor backdate the birth certificate so that she could have a June baby.)

At first I did not know how I should feel about his death.

But 65 is too young to die. 

The failure of our marriage molded my relationships for the next few decades.  As my friend & lover Philippe once remarked:  “Your need to be free is inherent in your being.”

Philippe may have been on target – but I think my need was molded by the unsustainable problems in my marriage.  I was never again willing to take that leap. 

And there were offers.

Of course, as Kristofferson wrote for Janis Joplin:  “Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose / Nothin', don't mean nothin' hon' if it ain't free.”

It is difficult for me to mourn for him – in the sense that I mourned over the years for the man I thought I married..  I mourn for anyone who dies so young.  I mourn for his children & his family & friends.  I mourn for the young Jaki Jean who would have been devastated.

I find no resolution, experienced no closure.  Just incredible sadness.