O.K., texoma, I've thought about this to a great extent.  I'm not prone to regret the past because I believe I was meant to learn lessons by my mistakes.

There is one period of my life that I do wonder......what if?.....only because I was never so loved and I have never loved so much.  Also, I never think of it as a mistake.  Only fate intervening.

I met my ex-husband through a large group of friends who all hung out together.  This was when I was almost fifteen.  Although he was nineteen (four years, four months, twelve days older than me....I can still remember) we were kindred spirits from day one and I always knew that I would marry him.  He was my best friend, my confidant, my pal.  We had so much in common:  movies, dancing, fishing, camping, tennis, swimming in the moonlight......on and on.  Everything one could dream of.

Sure, we had our setbacks but it mostly was a result of my father and his mother.  Otherwise, we were the "golden couple".

We would have celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary this past August 5th.  We became engaged at Christmas 1971 and were married that summer (eleven days before my 18th birthday).  What a wedding it was!  I had five bridesmaids, he had five ushers.  Over 200 people helped us celebrate our union.

We had so many plans and goals.  After we were married for less than a year he came home from work one day and said, "We're moving to Minneapolis this summer".  He was an an American and, although his parents had moved to Canada when he was eight, they had moved back to the States a year before we were married. 

I was heartbroken and didn't want to move.  We had built a beautiful life together.  We had so many friends and family and we spent a lot of time with all of them.  He said,  "Either move, or forget you have a marriage."  Unfortunately, in 1972, men could get away with saying that.  So I went for lung x-rays, had my plants quarantined and inspected, had our cat get the AOK, swore on a  bible at the American consulate that I would never disobey the laws of the US, etc., and said goodbye to my family and lifelong friends.

We stayed with his parents for the first few months but we quickly found an apartment, furnished it beautifully, and were already involved in new jobs.  He was a civil engineer and I was in journalism.  I had hope for the future because I was with him.

We had romantic dinners at restaurants, went to a beautiful lake in Wisconsin where his boss owned a cottage, and spent a lot of time just walking and talking.  We always went for walks together, even if it was freezing.  You'd laugh if you saw the way we dressed but we were always warm.  We also managed to hold hands through the many layers of gloves.  Quite often we were the first ones to step into the new snow in our favourite park and we used to have a ball.  Yes, we were silly enough to lie flat on our backs and make angel wings! 

Although I had made great friends very quickly at the newspaper, he seemed to resent this.  No.  Not seemed.  He did resent this.  The guys in advertising invited him to join their weekly poker game, which I thought was a tremendous gesture on their part, and he declined.

And why am I calling him "he"?  His name was Dale  He was intelligent, extremely kind and thoughtful,  a hell of a lot of fun,  and he looked like the younger Robert Redford.  I'm not going to apologize for choosing a man like that, especially when I chose him at the ripe old age of fourteen (and a half, as George Carlin would say).

Regardless.  Dale started to take more assignments out of town where he would be gone overnight, then two or three days at a time.  When he was at home he spent the majority of his non-working hours at his Mom's.  In less than two months I knew we were headed for big trouble and begged him to go to marriage counselling with me.  He was like a completely different person.  He became abusive with his words and emotions. 

By Christmas 1974, three years after we had become engaged, and six months after we had moved to Minneapolis,  I told him if he didn't seek help of some kind, either with me, or alone, that I would leave him.  I gave him until the New Year to make a decision.  Of course he refused.  I left and went to Vancouver.  He spent many months sending me flowers and talking to me on the phone.  I went back in July but the first place we went was to his mom's.  When I had a chance to be alone with him I realized I could never come back.  He had become a complete stranger.  He was indifferent, sarcastic, and.......oh, it doesn't matter.  He just was not the same person I had loved for almost six years.

We went to the same lawyer, together, to file for a divorce.  Let me tell you, the lawyer was amazed.  We reached a settlement quickly because I agreed to leave him with everything.  I was back on a plane to Vancouver within hours.

I returned to Winnipeg a few years later and saw Dale briefly while he was visiting his sister.  Neither one of us had replaced the other and it was so painful to still be so much in love and not know why it had ended.

During our visit he told me he had developed epilepsy and the doctors thought that it had been latent for some years.  We kept in touch sporadically over the years.  He had several brain operations which I was unaware of.  He had a grand mal seizure just before Christmas in his 44th year.  He was alone when he died. 

That was eight years ago.  His parents/family never thought to tell me and I learned of his death three years after the fact.  I was told by his widow, of all people, (God bless her)  that he always kept a picture of me by his bedside despite the fact that he remarried.  She told me that after his brain surgeries, "Dale wasn't the person you or I knew and loved."    They had two young children when he passed away but she said that he barely knew them.  

How unbelievably sad his life was in the last years.

So, texoma, if I had three years to do over again and knew then what I know now.......well, I would never have left him.  I would have understood why his personality changed so quickly.  I would have borne his children.  I would have held him in my arms while he took his last breath.   augustleo