"I Am Always Remembering..."

It was 6:55 PM, September 20th 2006. It was a Wednesday evening late in that summer. It's now been exactly twenty years ago. I recall that I was driving along Gratiot Avenue here in Detroit. I was on my way to see a friend when my phone rang. On the line was an internet acquaintance, "Chris Stone," the man I would later know to be Stephen Christopher Harris. What I didn't know before I answered was that he would from that day onward be the man who would more profoundly affect and alter my life than anyone else before or since.

This was the first time we'd talked by phone. We spoke only briefly, he told me about the project he was working on at a bank 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 plaintiff tone that he would use many times in the course of our love affair that quickly followed... it seemed to be saying, "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 own heart's most precious desires...

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 the profile photo above which really 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, twenty 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 with him is frozen in my mind and in my heart and I have re-lived them all throughout every day 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, as I take my last earthly breath, I'm sure this will be remembered.

"I am always remembering...

And my greatest fear is that I may not live long enough to forget."