by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2014/10/23 14:02 +00:00, original URI: http://www.siao2.com/2014/10/23/8770668856267196242.aspx
So yesterday Teresa came out and spent a lot of the day here. And I explained to her more about Liz. You know, how I never realized how she felt until it was to put it simply too late. After all, the only thing we ever shared that could be deemed romantic was a few songs dancing and one kiss.
Teresa and I even talked about movies and I pointed out how I can't even say Liz and I fell just short of an inspiring love story. It wasn't Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo in Just Like Heaven, because they spent the whole movie falling in love, and the one brief moment that she woke up and didn't recognize him was forgotten when he built the huge garden for her and then touched her hand to return her spare key. After that, she realizes that it wasn't a dream and they will [presumably] live happily ever after.
With me as the entirely clueless one who didn't realize anything until it was too late, all I can say about Just Like Heaven is that it was clearly not our story.
Perhaps City of Angels with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage might come to mind. You know, the couple that had just that one night together before she died, and he (as a former angel) has the rest of his long life to remember their brief moment together.
Well maybe that would have almost been the story from Liz's point of view, but I was too blind to give her the small crumb that would have meant the world to her. I would simply have been a supporting actor in her love story that spanned half of our lives. But I didn't even give her *that*. All that I did was give myself a tragic memory of what could have been.
I could probably think of countless movies with happy endings with such similarities.
And I could probably think of almost as many epic plays that were tragedies, all of which would echo in such a familiar.way.
But the one advantage to being cynical is that I can take The Story of Liz and Michael (such as it is), my adult lifetime of serial monogamy, and the recent recurrence of 30-80 attacks per day of trigeminal neuralgia (intractable to medication, so far) and think of all of it as a tragic tale of *just desserts*?
Yes, the trigeminal neuralgia is incredibly painful, just like it was in 1993, until the radiofrequency rhizotomy done in 1994 by Poletti and Apple left me pain free for two decades.
But last time I dreaded each tic (attack) of trigeminal neuralgia and thought cynically that "it figures I am being punished for no reason!".
And this time I almost welcome each tic (attack) of trigeminal neuralgia as proof that even an atheist MOT cynic can have the opportunity for experience a non spiritual form of karma.
I said ALMOST. It is still intensely painful each time a tic occurs. But with neurosurgeon Charles Poletti retired, neurosurgeon Sherry Apple passed away, and the disease [so far] not responding to medication, I don't even have the first clue who might be able to help me.
Oh well. I'm enough of a cynic to appreciate the irony in following twenty years of numbness with a whole huge mess of pain.
I'm older now. And not so easily cowed by something as trivial as pain. Liz put up with a lot more, after all.
for Liz, with apologies, too little and too late....