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41 Years Ago Yesterday.....

I had a boyfriend and I always remembered his birthday because it was a day off of my grandmother's birthday. We dated on and off for 3 1/2 years but there was always a feeling of inevitability that we would end up together. His family really liked me and thought I grounded him and humanized him.

He always wanted to be a police officer his whole life. It was almost 20 years ago now that the dream came true and I watched with his family as he graduated with a huge class of recruits as a NYC Police Officer.

That 20 years is important. See, NYC Police Officers can retire in 20 years. Maybe that's why I've had this urge to move up here. Despite living near the city, I always preferred a rural atmosphere. He came from far out on Long Island, where the developers hadn't quite reached back then (although they are fast encroaching nowadaze) and really liked not feeling like you were on top of your neighbor.

All of those dreams came crashing down in May of 1987 when he and his brother and another friend were killed in a car accident. It still hurts to this day to talk about it and think about it.

And yesterday would have been his 41st birthday. Would I be doing the same thing? Would we have been planning to move out of the NYC area and to a more rural area with our kids? I am sure he would have loved this life as much as I do - for all the differences we had, this was one thing we both appreciated. We had problems where I was more emotionally needy than he was, but his parents thought I always helped him that way. But he had the perfect demeanor for a police officer.

I thought his birthday was today - but it was my grandmother's that was today. I only thought about it very late yesterday. Is that the reason I was so emotional yesterday? I don't know. Honestly, I don't think so because other things have been building for a while and yesterday it was like the dam burst with that. Maybe it was the subconscious part of knowing his birthday was yesterday or even thinking it would be the next day.

I still miss him a lot sometimes. My son is named for him and he's got the personality that can bring a smile to my face at just the right time. Sometimes I think he is still with me, or us, like the time my son went down a flight of stairs and didn't even have a bruise on him.

But there are times like this that are hard, when I mourn the life I might have had, if he had lived. The realistic side of me sometimes says that I don't know that it would have worked out - we could have ended up bitterly divorced as well.

But I would have loved to have found out.....

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