The Other Side of Happiness

Brightling Graves, originally uploaded by ART NAHPRO.

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happiness" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Carl Gustav Jung

A very very long time ago I was in love with a boy in high school. On his eighteenth birthday he went skidoing with friends. There was a terrible accident and Guy was thrown from the skidoo and hit a post with his stomach. He survived the accident and stayed in hospital for nearly a month but unfortunately just when he was about to be discharged complications arose and Guy passed away.

I was totally crazy about him as was just about the entire girl population at our school. He was a star football player whose number was 27. It would become my husband's favorite number and our daughter would be born on this date.

After Guy’s passing I recall many times over speaking with my two friends on how much I missed him and how nice he was when I had asked him to play a Beatles tune for me on his guitar. How he and J.C. had played a joke on us and sent us to the Bytown Cinema to see “Performance” telling us it was all about the Stones only for us naïve girls to be totally shocked to find Mick in bed engaged with two girls. That was the nature of the V.D. boys and we all liked it. They were fun.

Many nights after Guy’s death I lay wide awake; thinking and dreaming of someone like him. I prayed that maybe even a close friend who shared so much like him who had a heart just as deep would be someday a friend to me.

And then one cold September night {September 2nd} my close friend Diana asked me to go to the British Hotel in Aylmer Quebec. She had wanted to see if the guy she liked was there that night. We met up with two guys from school. There was no guy for her, but that night I met Stan.

Unknown to me then that he was a life long friend of Guy’s and a friend to J.C. He was down in Ottawa for J.C’s wedding and he gave me a ride on his maroon colored Kawasaki bike. A few years later my girlfriend died in a horrific car accident. Because of her I had met my future husband;and many years later 13 to be exact my son Tyler was born September 2nd.... fate?????

The V.D. boys from Philomen Wright High school in Hull Quebec that I always found attractive and intriguing like Guy, J.C., Alan, Hal and Stan were not after all inflicted by the disease as I had thought but were really young boys going to school in the city that had left their small home town of Val’Dor in Quebec.As you might have guessed V.D.was short for Val D'or.

I always wondered how they all could have succumbed to the same dreaded disease and being a bit of a foolish girl then who was attracted to the bad boy image I never really bothered to read past the initials only thinking “Oh well they must be a pretty wild bunch”; I just took it for granted that that’s what it had to mean! But for their sake and eventually mine it was only an innocent tag for the out of town boys.

And life actually didn’t turn out so bad for me and the boy from Val D'or!

The Other Side of Happiness

A long, long time ago I dreamed of love
My most secret thoughts could never speak of
In hushed silence I adored you, yearning to be by your side
And then you blew my mind and without warning… died

There never be another love like thee
I could never see another quite as free
I recall your hair of red auburn floating and billowing in the wind
As I watched… you slowly ran to join the team while I sat quietly behind

The days and nights that followed became all one
All that there was left in life was already done
I could not think of anything or anyone but you… I was obsessed
And you smiled to me beyond the photograph in white of uniform and numbered breast

In the long lonely nights I’d weep
And in the short of days I’d sleep
My upturned life was nothing more
But a longing wishful dream of yore

But life went on and I never did forget
Of the boy who I had with pleasure met
I prayed for love and wished for one like him
Maybe someone, maybe even his true long friend…with alike whim

Then one cold and chilly September night
A tall, skinny and British looking kind of guy stood quietly in the light
Against the dark bar wall he held a white helmet in one hand and his foot upon a vacant post
Unknown to me he was a best friend of the boy I’d lost

That night I took from him a cold motorcycle ride
Without a clue …that someday I’d be his warm and loving bride

A life complete with sadness of my youth
I learned acceptance of the truth
In life’s darkest room I had found true love
With all the years to undeniably prove

And now today with patience and equanimity I stroll
Along a pasture green of a country knoll
Behind a secret garden wall sheep graze quietly unseen
I remember back when I was first in love and only eighteen

It was only an infatuation of my being
I loved the boy but did he love me?
I wanted desperately to be the one it seemed
But it really was only what I had wished and dreamed

I was wrong for there would be yet another
One to love even more than any other
And he in turn would deeply love me
Forever in each others arms we would always be

I looked within the garden walled
Two graves side by side lay silently asleep … I was enthralled
So far removed from all the world
Together for all eternity in their tranquil afterworld
In life all the love they shared was totally consumed
Now entombed in death the daisies bloomed

And I dreamt awake of the place where my love and I would fall asleep for all of our eternity.

Annabelle