I met my first husband just briefly the night of my mother’s funeral. I was 17 so I didn’t have the sense to be at home mourning like I should have been, I was with my girlfriends looking for comfort in all the wrong places. Found it! Well, found it the next night when we went back. Eddie and Rob were roommates, I’m honestly not sure which one of them I was supposed to be meeting that night. A friend had convinced me to go to a mutual friend’s house by telling me there was a guy there who looked a lot like my past summer fling. That was enough to pique my curiosity so I went along.
Now, this is one of those ridiculous stories where fate steps in. We went to the friend’s house, he wasn’t home. We had traveled to the county north of us for this adventure, which was a big deal back then, so we weren’t about to just turn around and go home. While driving down his street peering to see if he was out and about in the neighborhood my friend yells, “there they are!”… now picture this, it’s dark out, there are trees, through the trees there’s just barely a hint of light shining through from the back of the house. How on earth she saw him is still beyond me, but she did, so we parked and walked up to the back of the house, we approached the glass sliding doors and knocked. This didn’t go over well, lol. Let’s just say there may have been some not so legal activities taking place in that house and they weren’t so keen on having unannounced visitors show up, at the back door none the less. Anywho, we managed to get in without anyone getting killed so the story starts there.
The reason I say I don’t really know which one I was there to meet is because they honestly both looked a lot like that previous fling, so who knows at this point. It was the 90’s, if you looked like you could be in the hip hop group Cypress Hill, I was willing to give you a chance. Smh, what a mess those years were! Okay, on with the story… so Rob and I did not connect that night, he and another of my girlfriends were drooling over each other in a very sort of, well disgusting way. It was kind of gross, truly. She made plans to come back and see him the next night, I had met Eddie briefly, he had been out and just happen to arrive as we were leaving, he was cute, worth coming back out the next night.
Eddie and I were together nearly everyday from then on for the next 18 years. He wasn’t perfect, and I gave him hell. He was a good guy though. A good provider, a good father and a good husband (when it really counted). Tomorrow will be 6 years since the accident, I miss him. My children miss him. We really were just kids, we spent the next two decades playing house and just trying to figure it all out as we went along. We messed up a lot, but we did get a lot right as well. We grew up together, I just wish I knew then all the things I know now. I would have loved him louder.
To be continued…