Life as a Book

I often see my life as a book.

You know: chapters, index, footnotes.

We all can figure out the chapters in our life book: natural demarcations when our life changed in a significant way.

I perhaps have more chapters than the average person because we moved 13 times during my husband’s Navy career.

So in addition to all the usual chapters like school and marriage, I have all the places I lived (and often can only identify the baby in the photo based on the house in the background), the churches I attended, and the libraries I frequented.

That makes indexing my life both easy and more complicated. If I think of a friend, I usually have to work through a matrix of how, where and when I knew them–to put them into context in my life.

And the footnotes? Those are the “whys” of how I know them: soccer teams, boy scouts, Bible study, fellow dog owner, walker, and so forth.

Because of all those moves (thank you, American taxpayers), I have good friends spread across the country. I lived with them for pockets of time–usually the length of a chapter–and then we moved on.

Sometimes it takes me completely aback to realize they’ve been happily living their lives all those years since I last saw them.

The children actually grew up and are no longer doing their homework and playing computer games in the family room.

And yet the friends are as familiar to me as if I had walked around the block with them yesterday.

Military life the cause?

It may be the result of how I’ve lived my life; how I’m emotionally handled all those friendships and separations. Wonderful volumes of life lived and then put on the shelf as a cherished memory.

I used to liken my husband’s deployments to reading a book. When the pages are open on your lap, you’re in the midst of the story–breathing, living, responding to the main character.

But when you closed the book and moved on with your day-to-day life, that character with whom you’ve been so involved disappeared and you didn’t actively engage with them: they weren’t in the conscious, focused part of your life and mind.

Back when my husband sailed under the seven seas, we had little contact with him once the submarine sank beneath the waters.

30 words a month for a family gram–a radio message sent out in electronic spurts and picked up by all the subs in the fleet–were all I could send him. He could not respond.

I got used to him disappearing for weeks and months at time with no contact beyond a note or two he’d left behind.

He’s alive!

One day, we walked down the long rough Connecticut driveway to the mailbox. There among the magazines and the bills was a letter in an unknown hand with an odd stamp.

When I opened it, a Polaroid photograph fell out.

The note read, “I thought you would like this,” and was signed by a name I didn’t recognize.

When I turned the photo over, I saw my husband wearing his uniform stepping through a hatch, a wide grin on his face.

My heart leaped and I gasped, “He’s alive!”

The toddlers looked up in confusion. “Who’s alive?”

I laughed. “Here’s what daddy looked like just the other day!”

They danced about my feet and giggled, but my heart leaped and I couldn’t stop smiling.

Even though I knew he’d return and I’d see him again, I’d closed the book and forgotten that he lived on somewhere else.

As do my friends.

Some people will tell you the reason they look forward to heaven is the opportunity to see loved ones again. That will be a wonderful day.

For me, right now, I liken it to a book with more terrific stories and lives than I could even imagine here on this side.

I already have the joy of seeing my loved ones–friends and family alike–in the book held snug to my heart just waiting to be opened and relived.

And I like to think I’ve still got some favorite chapters ahead of me and splendid characters to love.

How about you?

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