Barbara J. Hamby

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Farewell “L”

Having resided in this area for more than forty-five years, and lived to what most consider old age, I often scan the obituaries for familiar names.

Recently the name of a former boyfriend caught my eye.

We dated for less than a year more than 33 years ago, but he was such a character, that I still remembered and thought about him occasionally. Once in a while, I’d think I might look through an old address book for his daughters’ names and phone numbers, but I never actually did.

“L” was 62 years old when I met him; I was 45. He was such a young 62 that the difference was no problem for me. He was handsome and dashing and highly energetic. He could work his night shift, pick me up in the morning for a day of swimming and sunning, then take me to dinner and dancing or an evening at the horse or dog races. I wore out before he did. He had a wonderful operatic singing voice. Even though he was a smoker, his lung power amazed me. If cigarettes killed him, they took their time. He was 95 when he died.

Although “L” had come to this country many years before, he spoke broken English with a heavy accent. I loved to hear him roll the “r’s” in Barbara. He grew up in an area of Central Europe where there were volatile government transitions several times during those years. For that reason, his accent was not easily identifiable. He could speak several languages fluently.

One evening when we returned from the horse races, he talked to me in English in the front seat, spoke Italian to a couple in the back seat, and Croation to another man in back. I feared for our lives since he was obviously not concentrating on his driving.

A couple of other interesting incidents that made him memorable come to mind. One day when we stopped by his house, probably to get his swimsuit, he opened a kitchen drawer and pointed to a stack of uncashed paychecks. “Take a few,” he said, “you need them more than I do.” I was horrified and urged him to take them to a bank where they’d be safe.

After a number of months of dating every weekend, he suddenly stopped calling. I was curious, but didn’t contact him since he had continually told me that he was too old for me. A year later, he called. “Do you know what day this is?” Totally surprised, I said I had no idea. He informed me that it was a exactly a year from the day we had broken up. I asked him what happened. He told me that the last time he called I’d ended the conversation with “Goodbye.” He claimed that, always before, I’d said, “Bye-bye.”

We went on one more date, but the magic was gone, and we both moved on.
Goodbye, “L”.