In Good Time

I felt myself truly unwinding, uncoiling as the road uncoiled before me. My muscles were relaxing, my mind began to rid itself of its burdens as my eyes hit the shining ocean with its waves crashing into the rocks and shoreline for the uncountable zillionth time. The sun illuminated the slight haze in the air, giving me a surrealistic view of what lay ahead. The road pulled me along, the car drove me, not me it and I gladly gave in to its every whim, swinging left, then right, then curving and straightening out and curving again as the sun highlighted the hills on my left, melted the haze in spots, turned it into a rainbow in places and made the ocean sparkle.

I was moving with a pace and feel I had forgotten was possible and as I was doing so, I thought, Wow if Karen was...Karen! She would have to come to mind, just as I was rolling with the curvature of the road, trying to grasp mountains, sunshine and ocean mist with my bare hands. I had begun to imagine how great it would have been for her to have shared this with me. I pulled into an area marked SCENIC VIEW and tried to clear my mind.

I walked to the edge of a cliff and stared into the sea. Off to my left was a couple, arm-in-arm, looking into the distant waters. The young woman reminded me of Karen with her hair blowing in the breeze. Karen's hair would blow in the breeze the same way, when we would stand on the Lake Michigan shore and gaze across the water. A few minutes later, they walked my way toward their car still arm-in-arm, talking and laughing, just as Karen and I would have been doing, had she been with me. The aching absence of the woman who was supposed to be my wife tore my gut in half. Why did things have to end up this way? What was it that made her change so abruptly? What if there was someone else? Where are they and what are they doing now? Knowing I would drive myself crazy by continuing to ask questions that I couldn't answer, I calmed down and eventually got back on the road.