I once knew a dreamer...

I once knew a dreamer.When the neighborhood ruffians were engaged in mortal battle over a kick ball, she was inside reading "True Romance."Although she did extremely well in school, the report would come back from the nuns that she was often caught looking out the window, daydreaming.Van Gogh and Steve Jobs did the same.She many times seemed to be somewhere else and one couldn't guess where.

After high school, our friend dated a handsome and very intelligent man and he pursued her ardently.They wed after a few years to a song that went like this:"There were bells on the hill but I never heard them ringing, I never heard them at all, 'til there was you."Deeply in love, they set out together.In time, somewhere along the way, the bells stopped ringing and when she tried to tell me of this, I didn't hear.This beautiful woman had an image of love and when it came, she didn't recognize it at all.

Flailing in her new marriage, she looked for reasons for her unhappiness.There were many, including her father, but the Church, the repressive Church of her youth, was a prime suspect.Had their rules made her marry young?What role did it play in her love less world ?In her search, she left the church behind and moved on to a new faith of her making.I told her how much courage that took, for I didn't belive that we were made that way; that we were so easily fooled by our own wants.

I think that she was haunted by depression and knowing little of this and the possibility that it was inherited, she sought comfort in familiar things, things that had wracked her family for decades.When the end was near and the disease was affecting her thinking, she told me that, although the hospice people were trying to kill her, a young , kind priest had visited who was offering sanctuary.Yes, I thought, he would in any case.Always.

The beautiful dreamer is never far from my thoughts.I know that the perfect ,unblemished love that our dear friend had sought was waiting for her.Always.