"A Walk to Remember"

It was late spring of 1978 when I met my first fiancé. I was 22 years old and she was 18. I was from a small town in northeast Texas and she was from a small town in southeast Missouri. She was a cousin of a friend of mine and she was there for a visit. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen and we hit it off straightway. I remember walking around town between her cousins house and mine just talking. Things began to get serious mighty fast.

We spent the remainder of the year, mostly on the phone. Boy, my Mom was upset a couple of times when the phone bill came in. Needless to say, I spent most of my pay on “being with her”. We even met halfway in Little Rock when she made a trip back to my home town, this time to see me instead of her cousins. We were so in love and life was so very good for us with the exception of our relationship being a long distance one.

We had already decided to get married the following summer, in June if my memory serves me right. But the distance had already begun to take its toll. Doubt had begun to set in along with mistrust and jealousy. The strange thing was that neither of us was actually seeing anyone else on the side. It was the price we both paid because of the distance between us. Or was it?

We had our differences of how a relationship works. I believed one way and she another, but I really wanted to know who was right. ‘Our song’ was “Kiss You All Over” by Exile. To give you an example of what I mean, the flip side of that particular forty-five record was I Love You No Matter What You Do.

At the time, my mind was young and my experience with love was the same. I was raised in the old southern Baptist traditions and they were always in the back of my mind with everything including my love relationships, what few there were. I was always in a state of confusion about what was right or wrong and acceptable or not. But I was also in love with this beautiful girl and I didn’t want us to end. But as time and that winter passed, I allowed my confusion to get the best of me.

I will never forget the last phone conversation we ever had over the phone. She was at work in the shoe factory she worked at and she was working the night shift. I had called her during her break and I was upset with myself about how I was handling our relationship. I was missing her. I was doubting her. I was not trusting her. So much was not right. There was so little time to talk about so much. I remember, vividly, her hanging up on me when I said to her, “You could have said no!”

I realized what I had said afterwards. I realized what it had meant for her to hear me say such a horrible thing. But she was hundreds of miles away. I lost a lot of sleep the next few days with what I could only imagine was going through her mind since our last phone call. I would try to call and she didn’t want to talk to me. The worst part is I knew and understood why. I didn’t even want to talk to me! So, I did what I normally do when I get upset, especially with myself…I took a walk.

I walked the four hundred fifty miles to her house from mine. No, I didn’t walk the entire way but I did walk for a lot of hours, for instance, three hours all the way through Little Rock, in the rain, and all during the night of the last hundred miles. Those hours of walking were the most troublesome for me. I was constantly going over every second I could remember of our relationship. I was asking more questions than I could ever hope to get answers for. But I was wondering most of all what I would say once I arrived at her front door. Would she even allow me inside? What would her parents say?

I knocked on her door about noon that Saturday morning. It was her Mom who had answered the door and she graciously let me in, neither of knowing for sure is if her daughter even wanted to talk to me. She, like her Mom, gracious allowed me to speak but then she said, “I had to leave because I should not have come.” I told her that I did. I decided at that moment to make her look good by making myself look bad. I told her that I had used her, that I didn’t love her the way I should have, all the while, her Mom listening to my conversation. I apologized and turned to the door and left. I remember the tears in my eyes as I walked down that dirt road leading away from her house towards the highway.

I thought the walk to her house was long until the walk home. I realize now that I should have said something else. I should have told her the truth, but would it have repaired the damage my mouth had already done? I will never know. But I do know that I did love her very much. She was my first real love. I never used her the way I had said. I was just confused within my own heart as to how to treat the one you love. I made the mistake of not treating her the way I wanted to be treated. Whether it would have made a difference, again, I will never know. But I do know that I would have walked away with a clear conscious in knowing that I didn’t use her and she would have known that I didn’t use her, as well. I should have told her the truth.