Now, we’re no longer just the two of us either. I met my wife again back in 2086. Quite how this happened, and is also true, is a story for later, but I met her again in Jamaica on a cruise ship or ‘cruising city’ as they had become. It was a bit of a shock, I think I can justify saying that.
I recognized her instantly by her face, body language and body itself. At first I couldn’t believe my eyes and glanced at her across the decks from behind the darkest of available sunglasses.
She was just as I remembered her to be when I met her when she was 28 back in 1988. She was travelling with a crowd of likeminded young women and was in no need of a 60 year old guy who might as well have been a stalker, but chance as it often does, took over. On a daily basis, the Captain of this floating island drew names at random from ‘the Islanders’, as we were called, to dine with him. So it was that I ended up seated next to what I now know and accept was my deceased wife. At the time it took two things to convince me that I was not hallucinating.
Firstly, she was unfazed by the situation and simply said, “Nice to see you again you asshole,” this being her one time favorite term of endearment towards me and secondly she continued with, “You took me places I had never been, and you showed me things I had never seen.” Only my wife could know these words since I only uttered them once back in 1988 when I had first fallen in love with her.
My only other recollection from the night we met back in 1988, was her own opening remark to me following my enormous yawn during the most boring of ALL American pastimes, the World Series.
She, sitting on a bar stool right next to me, was as yet unknown to me and reacted to my satisfying yawn by asking, “Am I keeping you up”
The twinkle was in my eye even then as I replied, “Not yet, but something could be arranged, perhaps?
The rest, as they say, is history.
Karmilla and I married, had a child. She died but now she’s back. However in hell it could have happened like this is beyond me, but what could be better, I constantly ask myself? Even better, she has not aged one day since she came back either.
The biggest adjustment in this happy event was for our girl, since she now had her mother back. She had never known either of the forms her mother had inhabited so there was no awkwardness ever between them. In fact the age thing worked real well in most events.
The men I mixed with infrequently were jealous and couldn’t get beyond my age and the youngsters who had to put up with me. Those of them who came to know me better over time soon understood the value of my years and what I could do for them as well.
Karm is away on this my 160th birthday because frankly, birthday’s matter nothing to us now. Our girl on the other hand never lost her love of them and the energy to celebrate in any way she could. I doubt she ever will. And God bless her for that!
My wife (I smile at the thought) is in New Madrid today and for the past month working on building projects only the 22nd century could birth. These floating cities high in the sky are spectacular and uplifting – no pun intended – because they blend the new with legacy artifacts from their long lost past. Karm is involved in the design and implementation phases of these wonderful places. Her claim to fame initially was the reconstruction of the sunken city of Venice which began to slip even further below water level because of storms in November 2012. Fully a month before the world stood still for the first time in living memory.
As I reflected on these things, I realized that the 2012 disaster had been the most tremendous thing for us…
To be continued…