May appear closer…
Meatloaf’s “Objects in the rearview mirror” has a place in the iPod of my soul. It was playing on the radio when I heard that my best friend, Robbie, had been killed in a car crash.
We were close as any brothers than you ever knew.
Every now and again I’ll shut myself off from my world, play the song and have a little cry. Robbie and I had survived the worst that boarding school could dish out… we attracted the most vicious of bullies, over and over again and we had survived.
Together.
But the song doesn’t end there… The third part of the song is about a lover and is the other reason why the song is special.
A lover, and her salvation, came into my life a long time after Robbie’s accident. In fact, it came after everything. The divorce, the loss of a job, a house, family. Everything. I had managed to find a teaching job up in Johannesburg but if Kharma was planning to punish me, this job was surely the punishment. Everything about it was negative and it slowly broke me down. I was at my absolute worst. A shell.
I wasn’t looking for love – I was looking for reasons to live.
I don’t think I ever found specific reasons to want to live. Not then, at least. I did, however find a friend. And a lover. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever known and she brought her passion for life into the bedroom.
Although, to be honest, we kind of made love everywhere except the bedroom. It was like making love to the sun (even when it was next to a fire under the stars). She would flash the biggest grins and I would lose myself in those beautiful sky blue eyes.
I used her body just like a bandage.
But we moved on. As I did. And do. The time wasn’t right for something more serious. It was a time for healing and surviving my divorce. We did.
Together.
And for that I will always love her. And look into my lover’s eyes whenever we make love.
