Love story on Christmas

Merry Christmas!

God, i'm bored. :-/

I seriously have absolutely nothing to do today. I'm off work and feeling like its a normal day and not a holiday. My sister decided to spend her holiday with her boyfriends family. I mean i get it. I would prob do the same if i had somewhere to go. It sucks though. My parents postponed x-mass untill Saturday, so we can give each other our gifts. Sigh. Whatvs.

Anyway, not the point. I'm supposed to tell a lost love story. Is it still a love story when it failed? Idk, but it's sad and just lovely all in one. This didn't happen on Christmas, but its christmas and i'm telling it. Right.

They say everyone has a story. I believe it. Either it's tragic or beautiful or a miracle or just plain funny, but we all have one. I have one. But this isn't about me. It's about my Aunt. Just the other day my mom, sisters and I, were all standign around the kitchen, doing dishes, putting leftovers in bowls and talking about love...and lack there of. The women in my family haven't really had the best luck in love through the years. To be honest, my parents are the only ones i know in our family that have a 'happy ending'. My aunts and cousins have had struggles with love. My sisters and I have also. We're still single.

But standing there doing dishes and listening to all these bad experiences makes me relieved I am. It's like a curse. Sadly, but it is.

None of them have end up with that person they were meant to be with. Yes, i believe in that. I believe there's specifically someone out there for you. Well, now its been hard to keep that true. We are living in a real world, where things and people are harsh and theres really no fairy tale. There are hardship and struggles. But then theres hope and happiness. And like they say, if God takes care of Sparrows and keeps them fed, why wouldn't he take care of me? We are beings with souls and a heart, who breathe and live—we are superioir to sparrows. He would take care of us with much more care. We are important too, if not more.

She was my favorite Aunt. I know, i'm not supposed to have favorites but if you knew the women from my family, you would gravitate to her too. She oozed elegance and all woman. She'd make sure her clothes were pressed and her hair was done right. Never cursed, never spoke a bad word about a person. A devoted Christian women. That type of woman that would make you feel like you needed to take care of yourself as a person when you looked at her. You'd want to straighten your shoulders and smooth out your skirt and fix your hair and made sure you looked as presentable as her. Even her walk was graceful. Very lady-like.

I personally find it exhausting and it worries me because i want to be like her in those ways. I should take care of myself more. I guess you have to be like that naturally. I'll get there one day with practice.

She was our best supporter. When others would ridicule us and make us feel inferior about being single, she would defend us. But she had a reason. She strongly felt something deep about love and how it should be. So, she knew how we feel and so she would advise us and talk to us and make us feel like it's ok. I loved her for it. She got us.

Unfortuantely, we never got to see her during the years that much. Her house is in Puerto Rico. But when she did come visit, she would sit on my sisters bed and talk to us like grownups. She treated us like one and I think thats what we appreciated more. She’d chat and get really giddy and giggly, she’d loosen up. Truly graceful in her sillyness.

One holiday she came to visit. I went to entertain my baby cousin and didn’t meet her and my sisters when she, again, sat on my sisters bed.

(One point, I’m NEVER there for the good stuff. Its like, it wasn’t meant for me to be there. I get upset jsut thinking about it.)

They tell me she listened to my other Aunt harrass my sisters about marriage and love and how hers was amazing flaunting it. She got angry. She stopped her and rebuked her, telling her it wasn’t her business. They were sisters, so she had the courage to tell her to be quiet. My other Aunt sat there annoyed and not forgiving.

She began to tell her story. After that day I was told word by word what she’d said. We’ve discussed it many times so i feel as if I was there.

She met a guy when she was young and they clicked. She said he was charming and handsome. Gossip told her he was flawed. He had drug addictions and abused alcohol. It was the 70’s, everyone was into that stuff. But when he met her, he was different. He wasn’t into that stuff anymore as he was recovering. So, she met him when he was mending his life back together again. Despite it all, she fell in love with him.

He asked her to marry him and she couldn’t find a reason not to. Yet, my grandfather, who she admired and respected every word that came out of his mouth, disapproved of him. My grandfather was a serious man. Everytime he spoke, which was rarely, people listened. She was his right hand. But when he disapproved telling her, once an adict always an addict, she was heart broken. She couldn’t imagine doing anything against her fathers will. It nearly killed her but she accepted her fathers disapprovement.

She left this charming and handsome guy and never answered his proposal. At that time, marriage was important to all girls. It was their goal. Once they passed a certain age and didn’t marry, you were frowned upon in society. But even so, she embraced this shame. She was stubborn. She was graceful, lovely and lady-like, but she was very stubborn. She refused to take a leap and be spontanious or follow her heart. This time, she followed her father’s worry.

The guy was hurt and followed her. He waited and waited for her to say yes. My mother at the time was her friend and would tell her to answere him, to go for it but she’d brush her off.

She never answered him, of course. She thought she would never find someone. She was frustrated and lonely. One day she told herself that the first man who would talk to her on the bus on her way to work, she would marry him. She got on the bus and just as she hoped, a guy saved her a seat and she knew he was the one.

Months passed and the bus guy asked for her hand. She accepted. My granmother at the time couldn’t stand to the sight of the bus guy. First time my aunt introduced him to her mother, he had on shoes ecuvalante to flip flops. This turned my grandmother off comepletely as she alwasy thought you can tell so much about a person through their shoes. He was a disaster.

It was raining on the day of her wedding. Nothign sadder than rain on a wedding day. I remember seeing some old videos of her wedding and the first thing I noticed was the sadness in her eyes and i didn’t even know the truth. It was that evident. She told us the guy she declined called her to bid her farwell and good luck. He was still in love, of course, and not til that moment did she realize she’d done the biggest mistake of her life. She cried on the phone as he told her she’d be ok and that everything was goign to work out. He calmly and passively prayed for her over the phone as she sobbed. I can imagine she hated herself at that moment. And he was such a gentleman and calm while she was a complete mess.

I thought after that, why did he call? Wasn’t that a bit off and just rude? But I can imagine he was devistated too and didn’t know what else to do. So he foudn closure through a phone call.

She went on with her life and so did he. He married without love and had kids. She couldn’t have kids for a time. The struggles continued. At 41 she finally got pregnat with my cousin. She wasn’t completly happy. Her nervs were damaged and she suffered from nervous breakdowns once in a while. She could hardly get in cars. She became even more fragile.

He lived on somewhat happy and became a well respected pastor at a church in Pureto Rico. He was definitely blessed. But he never forgot her. He visited her through the years with his wife. He practiacally forced a friendship between his wife and my aunt. He WANTED them to like each other. It was like he wanted to keep a connection no matter which way. Anything to be at her side.

His wife even knew that he still loved her. She would tell my aunt all the time and for some reason she wasn’t jealous. It was like she couldn’t stop him form loving her so she just accepted the fact that she was the second love of his life. I’m sure she was hurt but God knows why she was never angry about it. My aunt was hard to hate.

By the time she finished her story sitting on my sisters bed, everyone around her were in tears. My other aunt’s pride sobbered up pretty quickly and she was ashamed. She also realized she never married the one she really loved.

I’m still upset I was never there to witness this. :-/ but her story doesn’t end here.

When I say the struggles continued for my aunt, i really do mean it. 2 years ago she was diagnosed with breast cancer. On top of the fact that she was almost stuck in this unhappy marriage and life, she became sick. In a matter of months her heath deteriorated quickly. She wasn’t herself anymore. She was under Kemo and lost her pride—her hair, but all for a good fight.

It was about the time my mother was diagnosed. They would call each other for support. We all had this deep faith in God that he’d heal her and my mother. A double miracle. I won’t ever understand God’s reason to take her but the moment she realized she only had a couple of days and my mother’s days weren’t being counted like hers, she was terrified.

My parents went to go visit her at her death bed and so did the man who never stopped loving her. He came with his wife to visit her for the last time and my mother says she was ashamed to have him see her in her condition. In her death bed, she was self concious about her looks. Crazy isn’t it? He didn’t seem to care one bit and just held her hand the whole time he was there. His wife standing behind him.

Her husband was pretty rude and knowing that other man was there, he “showered” her with kisses and attention…right infront of him. My aunt wasn’t comepletely coherent but she had enough sense to understand what he was trying to do and she pushed him away. My mom tells me she had to leave the room because she was torn between kicking his ass or laughing. Lol I wish I would’ve seen that.

My sisters and I got the phone from my father from PR telling us she passed away a couple days later and I could only think about her story and how her mistake became a lesson for all of us. She lived her life because she had settled, not because she loved. She left behind her 16 year old son who she protected over her own life. Probably because she gave up and he was the only person she lived that long for. She’d said it herself once, she said one day she would pack her sons things and hers and just come back to Boston and that was all she needed. That was a confirmation that what I thought was true. She was unhappy.

On my sister’s bed she told my sisters and my other clueless aunt to do things right. To wait. To be patient. God would grant us bigger and better things because he cares for us—he only wants great things for us. The one who is meant for us would be the biggest blessing He’d give us.

This is my only hold on hope. I believe her. I refuse to be like most women in my famliy who are everything but fully and completely to the core, happy. Because of her, I’ll always know that it is possible to love another and find true happines. But the key would be to wait for it paciently then learn how to hold on to it.

I really miss her.