THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY

This column is not about your ordinary Valentine’s Day, with its hearts and flowers and corny greeting cards and chubby cherubs brandishing bows and arrows.

This column is about yesterday.

Or, as the song goes:

“Yesterday

All my troubles seemed so far away.

Now it looks as though they’re here to stay.

Oh, I believe in yesterday”

But, first, let’s agree that everyone reading this is happily married or happily divorced or happily living with someone or happily doing whatever happy couples or happy singles, happily do.

With that housekeeping out of the way, now let’s talk all about love, and the one who got away.

Everyone reading this has, at one time in their lives, found and lost that one person they can never seem to forget.

Years, decades, lifetimes go by and then suddenly, out of nowhere, they pop up in your thoughts.

That’s because for all these years they have taken up residence in a remote part of your mind.

They never intend to leave.

You hear the words of a Sinatra love song and you think of him or her.

They show up for a fleeting second at 3:30AM when the person in your life is sound asleep next to you and you’re having a staring contest with the ceiling.

They flash in front of your eyes for a millisecond when you’re alone on a long boring drive.

How did you meet them?

Was it on a date years ago when you were in high school?

Was it someone you worked with during the day and secretly met with at night?

Did you know the moment you first met that this was it?

Yes, you did.

Were you together for just one kiss or was it a long, long passionate affair?

Do you still remember what it felt like the first time you said, and heard in reply, “I love you”?

Will you ever get the last time the two of you parted out of your mind?

Do you fantasize about running into him or her and do you rehearse what you’re going to say?

Fess up. Have you “Googled” him or her?

Have you checked them out on Facebook or Instagram?

Are they alive and living another life in another place?

Or did they die and, as so many analysts have said, do they have a stronger hold on you in death than they had in life?

Where is all this going?

Maybe I haven’t written this about you. Maybe I’ve written this about me.

Maybe I’ve written this because there’s a line Kris Kristofferson wrote in the song “Me and Bobby McGee” that I can’t get out of my head.

Maybe it will haunt you the way it haunts me:

“Then somewhere near Salinas, Lord, I let her slip away

She was lookin’ for the home I hope she’ll find.

And I’d trade all my tomorrows, for a single yesterday.

Holdin’ Bobby’s body close to mine.”

“AND I’D TRADE ALL MY TOMORROWS FOR A SINGLE YESTERDAY.”

Would you?