"I Am Always Remembering..."

I remember it as though it were yesterday... It was 6:55 PM.  It was a Wednesday evening late in the summer.  The date was September 20, 2006, exactly six years ago today.  I recall that I was driving along on Gratiot Avenue here in Detroit.  I was on my way to see a friend when my cell phone rang. On the line was an internet acquaintance, "Chris Stone," the man I would later know to be Stephen Christopher Harris, the man who would more profoundly affect my life than anyone else before or since.

He'd opened the door for this telephone call in an email to me the day before...







Tuesday September 19, 2006 - 11:59 am EDT

Chris Stone has sent you a message

Tampa, Florida US

Sent To: Christopher


Hey man,

I will be home Friday for the weekend. It would be great to connect with you via phone or in person.Sometimes it is nice to put a face with a profile. If you are interested. I will send you my number and we can make arrangement.

I currently doing a regulatory compliance audit in South Carolina. I am looking forward to being back and sleeping in my own bed and seeing things I am familiar with.

Excitedly, but also somewhat apprehensively, I wrote back to him that same day.  He'd struck up an online conversation between us the month before in August and he had been reading and commenting on my Yahoo 360 blog since July...






Tuesday September 19, 2006 - 1:53 pm EDT

Christopher has sent you a message

Detroit, Michigan US

Sent To: Chris Stone




Hi Christopher,

I'm good and it's nice to hear from you. I hope you re enjoying the weather in South Carolina, it's chilly here at home.

Say, it would be great to talk with you, and perhaps meet as well... I'd like to find out how your mom enjoyed the roses. You can feel free to call me if you like, my home phone number is 313 931-1083 (it's listed) or on my cell 313 804-1083.

Maybe we'll have the opportunity to meet this weekend when you re home. I work on Saturday, but otherwise no plans. Well, no plans other than patching, and caulking, and painting. My home looks like a bomb went off here. I decided this is the year to finish my interior renovation work, so I've got everything all torn up at once.

Well, I'll look forward to hearing from you, Christopher. My first instinct is telling me that you and I may become good friends.

Thanks for taking time to get in touch,

CF

The "roses" I'm referring to in the above email are in response to a comment that Stephen (or Chris, as I then knew him) left on my blog post from a week beforehand. At that time, I'd mentioned in my post that I'd taken yellow roses to my Mother's grave on her birthday (I did this last week as I do every year) in remembrance of the many times I brought her roses when she was here. In his comment, he said he was going to send his own mother some roses as well.

Later that same evening, "Chris Stone" replied and this was the first time he referred to himself by his real name, "Stephen..."

Tuesday September 19, 2006 - 10:43 pm EDT

Chris Stone has sent you a message

Tampa, Florida US

Sent To: Christopher

Great man,

I am looking forward to talking and meeting with you. It appears that we have alot in common. My number is 313-378-9718. Please feel free to call me when ready.

Stephen Christopher

While I was excited that he'd reciprocated in sharing his phone number with me, I was still cautious and I knew that I would not call him first and would instead wait to hear from him.  

That night as I re-read his emails, I remember feeling a great deal of apprehension and doubt about what his intentions might be.  I knew I wasn't looking for sex as many were on Yahoo 360, but rather, I was looking for something much more... something 'real.'  And at first, I decided to hope that perhaps we'd merely become in real life, the good friends that online we seemed to be.  I wondered all that evening about his signing that last message "Stephen Christopher." but then I quickly set aside my concerns realizing that many people use pseudonyms online although I usually didn't and I do not do so here.  And so that night, as I lay awake contemplating hearing from him, in my mind I imagined his voice and what he might say.  I waited in anxious anticipation for him to call.

That next day when he did call, we talked only briefly, he told me about the project he was working on  somewhere in South Carolina.  He told me he was calling me from a restaurant where he was eating his dinner alone.  And although he never said it during the call, I could hear in his voice a phrase that he would use many times in the course of our love affair that quickly followed... "I don't want to be alone in the world anymore."  And even at that time, his as yet unspoken sentiment was as familiar to me as was my own face in the mirror each morning.  I recall that in his strong but gentle voice, I heard the pleadings of my heart's most precious desire... and it was I thought, the same desire that his heart secretly held dear.

That very first call only lasted a couple of minutes... we'd exchanged awkward pleasantries and a few of the mundane details of our day as well, but I think he and I both sensed that there was something much more significant happening than either of us had expected.  He went on to reminded me that he was returning to Detroit that Friday and he said he hoped we could talk again and perhaps meet one another in person while he was home.  I told him that I'd like that and that I'd look forward to hearing from him.  And with that, we said our first goodbye.  

As I drove on to my friend's home, I remember already feeling strangely somehow connected to this man I had never laid eyes upon (except in a profile photo which didn't show his face), and to this man whose voice I'd only just heard for the first time... Yet somehow, I knew it was more than mere chance, it was not just some fluke of fate, but something more, something beyond the temporal... I knew it would somehow change my life.  Later that night, as I said my prayers on bended knee, realizing this, I gave thanks for what I knew was to become the beginning of my own hope not to be "alone in the world anymore..."

And now, six years later, nothing has ever been the same as it was before that Wednesday at 6:55 PM.  And although "life" has marched on relentlessly, that moment in time, like so many others that followed is frozen in my mind and in my heart and I have re-lived them all throughout everyday of my life since... these memories are like a strange, but welcomed haunting of my very soul... they reside in precious and painful corners of my heart.  And I know that even on my last day of this life, I'm sure this will be remembered.

I am always remembering.

"Fear Eats the Soul"