He threw the playing cards all over the pool deck.
I'd beaten him continuously, over and over.
Me eleven, him a grown man.
Was it Gin or Rummy or Gin/Rummy?
I was unbeatable.
"PICK THEM UP", he demanded and then stormed away.
I wasn't afraid of him, even though he was intimidating.
I was never fearful of him, only respectful and attached in deep and profound ways and I am still, though he's gone. Long gone.
My love for him has proven to me that not even death can separate us from those we love.
On my knees, surrounded by the massive screen which enclosed the beautiful, blue built-in pool, keeping away the hummingbird sized mosquitoes that flourished in Florida, where he'd taken me to vacation with his family, my beloved cousins and my adorable Aunt, his wife - The lightening to his thunder, I picked up each card and found him there once I'd finished collecting them.
We thoroughly shuffled the deck, he dealt and asked me how I do it. "How do you win over and over?"
I told him my truth. I had an imaginary friend who gave me the cards I asked for and then I demonstrated...
"I need an Ace, two, three". I picked up an Ace and a Two and a Three from the freshly shuffled deck and confidently folded them over. He shook his head and asked me more about my imaginary friend. This is where my imagination actually took over. I created details I completely fabricated about an imaginary friend who was real.
He believed the details as much as he believed in me, when I told him the secret of my success.
I can't remember how I explained the inexplicable, but others can and sometimes they remind me of the things I said.
I had an imaginary friend that did real things, but didn't resemble anything I'd claimed he might.
He was just there and nothing else.
I didn't feel alone, even when I was on my own in the crowded life I grew up in.
I sometimes wonder if I wasn't just extremely lucky in cards, rather then shadowed by the impossible, invisible, unlikely?
Proverb: Lucky in cards, Unlucky in Love...
Was I lucky? Did he exist? Who can say?
I'm no longer all that lucky in cards. I lose as much, if not more then I win.
I'm still what some people might call unlucky in love, yet just as I had confidence in my imaginary friend, I have certainty that my life is brimming with love; perhaps not thunder to my lightening, but love of all kinds always surrounds me; holding me, buoying me in everything I do, go through, deal with and especially in all the things that bring me happiness.
I can feel this love, as if it was a real and tangible thing, a stone in my shoe, a distinct mass filling my heart.
And it's the love I feel, but cannot see which holds me as I let go of one of the best loves I've ever known.
The first time I saw him, I fell completely in love.
Tall, dashing, striking, powerful and firey calm like a star twinkling in a stable, solid black sky.
He changed my life.
He moved me.
He opened me up.
He loved me, I could feel his love for me in the tickle of his warm breath rushing down my neck and the crazy horse kisses he pressed to my face every chance he got.
He loved my children.
He loved my father and mother, my sisters and brothers.
He loved us.
He was the most beautiful thing in the world to me.
He was mine.
I owned him and it gave me a feeling of purposefulness and a dignity that nothing else has.
I cared for him.
I gave him everything he needed and more, including my child.
I will never regret a single moment of my life, beginning the very second he came to me.
And it is with my best, most open, most warm, deepest, kindest, truest love that I let him leave me.
I would rather know this love, then that, I would rather have his thundering hoof beats cause the electricity lighting me from within.
He was the thunder to my lightening.
I've been in love with this horse, corny as it sounds and silly as it is, he's been the largest, most intriguing, most genuine, stirring, exhilarating, rewarding, painful, unsettling, beautiful love aside from parenthood, which I've ever known.
Even in these past few months of wondering and worrying and puzzling over what to do and when and if and why, I have grown infinitely in my capacity of love for him and in my respect for his beautiful life.
Even now, in the last hours and the hardest moments, I don't, won't and cannot regret a second spent knowing him and having his life in my life...
...and this makes me lucky in love.
Rest in peace Johnny Cash, my beautiful, beautiful boy and please, pretty please come to me in my dreams. Meet me in meadows, with the tall, green grass, hills and shade trees, where the wild flowers bend and lend their sweet scent in the gentle breeze. Find me beneath the open, bluest sky, speckled with cotton-ball clouds. Run to me and breath your soft breath on my neck, let me pepper your strong, perfect face with baby kisses and walk beside me, just as we have done in all the days I've known you.
See you soon.
I love you, I love you, I love you and I know that not even death, nor time, nothing, not one thing will ever change this.
My love stays when you go.
