Much Later, My Love

I heard a song the other day which reminded me of when I was a teenager. It’s important to know the title of this tune and the band that played it; and, what’s also interesting is that it made me recall a series of incidents which I find mystifying to this day.

As I sat in the driveway of my home listening to that song the car radio, I flashed back to my days as a sixteen year old working in the town library after school.

One of the librarians I worked with was a friendly woman with two children whom she talked about often. She lived in nearby town; but, not close enough where I’d know anyone from her neighborhood. I did meet her daughter, though, a pretty girl about my age, who often visited her mom at the library accompanied by her friends. I never said more than “hello” to the girl, and only once or twice I was in the same room with her as she would often enter the library and go directly to her mom’s office.

I left the job after I graduated high school and lost contact with the librarian and her daughter.

Years later, I met my wife and we began to date. While becoming acquainted, we talked about growing up and school and about our friends. It wasn’t long before we discovered that the woman I worked with at the library lived next door to her; and, that her daughter was my “new girlfriend’s” best friend. I also learned that their families were extremely close and often vacationed together. My wife considered her friend’s parents to be surrogate relatives, calling them “Aunt Millie” and “Uncle Joe.” When I was reintroduced to her friend, Diana, she remembered me from the library and our reunion was pleasant, if not amusing.

The one benefit of this coincidence was that my future mother in law was relieved to learn that her daughter’s new boyfriend, me, was considered to be a “nice young man” by her librarian friend, Mrs. Martens. My background investigation was completed with a stamp of approval coming from my former boss who just so happened to live next door to my girlfriend.

After four years of dating and engagement, we had a big, Italian wedding, and in due course, two wonderful children followed. During that span of time, I joined the police department and since retired, my wife advanced in her career, and we both reached middle age. Our family is doing well and I’d like to think that there is a lot more history to be made between my wife and me.

Every so often, we have some quiet time to chat as the day to day tasks of working and taking care of the kids means that we have few occasions to be alone and just talk. Sunday mornings, we rise early, at around six o’clock, and head downstairs while the kids are still sleeping to have coffee and read the Sunday paper. This is our opportunity to enjoy each other's company and to share a hushed laugh. Occasionally, we surprise ourselves.

On one particular weekend morning not too long ago, we talked about various jobs we had in high school. Of course, we reminisced about how I worked with Mrs. Martens all those years and eventually ended up marrying the woman whom she regarded her “niece.” I described how I remembered seeing Diana coming and going to the library with her friends all the time and my wife raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean she used to go to the library with all of her friends?” she asked.

I picked my head up from the sports section and looked at her. “Huh? That’s exactly what I mean. Diana always had a friend with her as she came to visit her mom.”

“She never took anyone to the library but me. I went there with her all the time.”

My mouth opened and I paused a moment. Finally I spoke.

“You mean to tell me that was you who I saw with Diana way back when I was sixteen years old?”

We both stared at each other. It was a moment when we both understood how eerie the circumstances actually were. More than just the coincidence of working with Mrs. Martens in the library, and then meeting her again nearly ten years later while dating her daughter’s best friend, was the fact that I used to regularly bump into the woman I would someday ask on a date, fall in love with, become engaged to, marry, and father two children with. All of this happened long before I would meet her one evening in a loud, smoky, night club and asked her to dance at one thirty in the morning.

“I have the chills.” I remember my wife saying.

“Wow. That was you the whole time? I can’t believe it. And we wouldn’t meet again for almost ten years as total strangers in a bar.” I pondered.

It took a few more seconds for that insight to sink in for both of us; yet, it required twenty years for us to finally discover this concurrence. We still chuckle about it. And, once in a while, something will make me ponder the mystery surrounding the memories I have of a young, teenaged girl following her friend around the library as I watched from between the book shelves.

Her image remains blank, as if shaded to obscure her identity. In my recollections of her at the library, she exists as an anthology of fleeting glimpses and passing glances. I’m unable to conjure a distinct likeness of her. The discovery of our previous encounters is like unearthing a treasure chest and finding nothing inside. It hurts because I can’t envision her walking next to Diana; and, I wish I was able to remember what she looked like when we came within precious inches of each other not knowing that one day we'd meet again and fulfill a new destiny.

Yesterday I sat in my car in the driveway of my home, and listened to a song I first heard as a sixteen year old teenager back in 1980 while driving to my job at the library. Inside that building was a woman who would remain an obscure outline in my mind for many years until the day I found her again and she became my wife.

That song made its own significance clear by its title: “Don’t Stand so Close to me,” by The Police. For me, it reminds me of a young man edged by providence away from the woman whom he was supposed to fall in love with later on in life, and not before. Perhaps if I stood closer to her, if our eyes met and we chatted like two awkward teenagers, things would have turned out differently. Who knows? What I do know for sure is that I am happy. We are happy, together.





family friend girlfriend library memory nightclub song The Police tune wife

That's for Life

On December 20, 2006, I woke up at around five o’clock in the morning, one hour before I typically rose, and did something I never do that early in the day. I checked my e-mail. My inbox contained a message from a woman whom I only knew casually through my best friend and former partner in the police department. Her name is Denise, and my friend Stephen hired her to work in the shop he owned. I helped at his store, fixing his computers and doing some counter work with the customers. Denise and I often talked and joked when we were there together, but our relationship was strictly professional, as we were both married and had families. Besides, she was Stephen’s friend from childhood.

I was curious to see a message from Denise, but not shocked. I gave her the address, not one that I use for personal e-mails, but an e-mail address I give to people I am iffy about. The subject line caught my attention, though.

Urgent! Please read!

It wasn’t spam, and I didn’t think she would hit me up with some sort of business scheme; but, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of a single issue where I’d need to speak to her in a hurry.

Stephen closed his shop up a few months earlier. Business in the shipping and receiving world was bad, especially since he had to compete with FedEx and UPS. Cutting his losses, he sold collectibles on eBay and enjoyed his well-deserved pension from the NYPD. Denise started a new business with her husband and by then I got a job with my current employer at the college. With that said, I had no real reason to have any contact with Denise unless Stephen was involved.

I opened the e-mail.

Mike, call me the moment you read this. It is important. Even if it is two o’clock in the morning, please call. I need to speak to you!

She included her home phone, her cell phone, and the number of the business she and her husband owned together. I wouldn’t call a woman I only knew casually at 5 AM. And not with my wife in the shower getting ready for work a few yards away in our main bathroom. I didn’t want to endure her district attorney-style grilling if she caught me calling a thirty-something woman from the secrecy of our computer room at dawn.

I waited until I got to work. My job keeps me in front of a computer all day and I can check my e-mail messages at will. I opened e-mail, navigated to my inbox, found her cell phone number, and then I called her up.

“Mike, oh my God Mike. It’s about Stephen.” She was bawling, weeping uncontrollably.

“What Denise, what happened?” My stomach tightened.

“He died. He died last night. He had a heart attack.” She said something else, but I didn’t understand it.

That old joke about someone bluntly being told, The cat died, came to mind.

There was no wind up to her delivery. She simply blurted, he died, just like that.

Your relationship with someone and how you receive bad news about them reveals much about how others perceive your connection to that person. Stephen was my friend since 1989. We worked together in a squad car for almost six years, backed each other up each other on the streets, and knew things about each other which our families were not aware of. Still, I found it odd that a woman from my part-time job was the only person who contacted me during that initial shock and mourning.

Once, only a few years ago, Stephen helped me out by giving me a job, insisting on paying me to set up his computer network. My family and I struggled because I had recently retired from the police department. I had brand new computer certifications, but no experience. One evening, when we were locking up his store, I thanked him, told him how much he was helping me, and I added I did not think I could pay him back. With a raised hand, he cut me off and said, “Hey, we rode in a sector car together. That’s for life.”

“He died?” That was all I could muster in response.

She gave me the details stating that he picked up his son, Jimmy, his only child, from the airport. Jimmy had come home from college to be with his parents for the holidays. Despite being divorced, Stephen purchased a home around the block from his ex-wife to stay close to his son and help raise him. To his credit, he maintained an amicable relationship with her for their son’s benefit. I met his former spouse, Terry, only once, since their separation many years prior. That night, he took his son home to meet his new girlfriend, a woman whom he had been dating for about two months. The three of them had plans to go out for dinner. He collapsed while preparing for a shower and could not be revived.

I hung up with Denise and ran outside my building. It was a crisp, cloudless day, and I ignored the cold. The folks in my office couldn’t help but overhear what I said to Denise, but they politely refrained from asking what was going on until I eventually told them about my friend’s passing.

For about two hours, I was in shock and denial. To make some sense of what happened, I called the county coroner’s office. A polite woman who answered the phone knew whom I was referring to off the top of her head.

“Yes, sir, they brought him in last night. His ex-wife is coming to claim his body.”

He was no longer a person, but a body.

After muttering a few polite words of thanks, I hung up. The Dean offered me the rest of the day off, and I refused. The best way to deal with his unexpected passing—a forty-eight-year-old man’s death being unexpected—was simply to put my head down and work.

After hanging up with the coroner’s office and conferring with my supervisor, I called my wife to tell her about Stephen.

“What do you mean, he died?” She asked with the same incredulity which I had when I spoke with Denise. “Isn’t he supposed to come over tomorrow?”

She was right. He was due to come by the next day for an informal visit just before Christmas, and I was looking forward to seeing him. Instead, I was going to attend his wake.

The next evening I arrived at the funeral home and was curiously pleased to see marked, New York City police cars among the clogged streets and parking lots nearby. Hundreds showed up to pay their respects. If you knew Stephen, you loved him. He was smart, funny, gregarious, and had a bit of a mischievous side to him. But he was loyal to a fault. As I wended my way through the dozens of officers congregating on the front steps of the funeral home, some I knew well, others only vaguely, I realized as good of a friend as I was to him, I was only one of many hundreds whose lives he touched. And I am ashamed to admit that I was a tad jealous.

Denise arrived with her husband and sought me out. She explained she did not know my telephone number and found my e-mail address on a scrap of paper at the bottom of her pocketbook. It was a minor miracle, considering that I gave it to her a year before. Stephen’s son, Jimmy, remarkably showed composure for a young man who had watched his father die only two nights earlier. And then I saw Terry.

A receiving line formed in front of her as she took up a spot near his casket. Terry arranged the funeral, the wake, and his burial. She even dug through his closets and found all of the items for his dress uniform, including his name plate, shield, tie, collar brass, and other insignia. She’d done well, and I was touched, as she and her son were the only family Stephen had in the world.

“Hi Terry, you don’t remember me, but I’m Michael, Stephen’s friend.” I offered my hand, and she took it and looked me in the eye.

“You’re Michael?” At first, I thought she didn’t hear me. Then she repeated herself.

“You’re Michael? Oh, my goodness. You’re all Stephen ever spoke about.”
She stepped back and looked me up and down. Then, she smiled, but not happily; but as if to confirm a suspicion.

“All these years,” she continued, “all I ever heard was ‘Mike and I did this, and ‘Mike and I did that.’ He spoke about you all the time, more than anyone in this room.” Of course, she didn’t include their son in that comparison.

It didn’t occur to me I was crying until she offered me a tissue. We talked a bit more and then I paid my respects to my buddy resting in a coffin.

Outside, I mingled with the cops, some in uniform and others in dark-colored suits, on the front steps. Most of them wore grim expressions while they talked shop and reminisced about the good old days when Stephen was alive. I couldn’t wait to get the hell away from them. The college’s more comfortable and safe environment made me realize how much my life had changed since leaving the job. The death of my friend and partner also severed one of my last ties to my past life in law enforcement.

In the months following Stephen’s death, I could not get a hold of his son despite his acknowledgement that we should stay in touch. In addition, Denise has remained aloof. I do not want to interfere with her life; and in fact, we had no relationship at all except for when we worked at our mutual friend’s business. Every once in a while, when I hear a joke that he would have laughed at, or when I see a gadget he would have enjoyed, or when I stumble on a hard memory from my days on patrol, I think of him.

Early in my early career as a rookie, a veteran cop who was about to retire offered me this adage:

“On this job, you’ll have secrets which you won’t tell your wife, your parents, your priest, or anyone that you know, except your partner. Those things die with you.”

Man, he was right. As of today, I have nothing but a few photos to remind me of the time I had with my friend. It is as if he never existed. There is no one else who I can turn to and talk to about all the things I did with him, and no one who will understand except other cops; and still there are things that even they should not be privy to. All of that died with my partner.

A long time ago, we rode in a sector car together. That’s for life.

Author’s note: The original story about Stephen’s death “Goodbye to a True Friend” can be read here. It was written the morning after he passed away.





business cops coroner die EBay FedEX friend funeral home NYPD officers partner police car sector car shipping shop store UPS