To all the girls I’ve loved

Love.  Love can be fleeting, love can be amazing, love can deeply hurt.  It took me quite a few tries before I found “the right one”.  Four times I thought I found “the one”, my true love, my soul mate.  At 18 years old I met a young lady named Diane who took my heart and my breath away.  Young love can be so exciting, and fleeting.  We were together for a year when I put a ring on her finger.  It was all very exciting, we were fresh out of high school she was in university, I was starting a business and we were starting a life together.

Diane and I shared many good times and had lots of fun.  When we are learning about ourselves sometimes our paths are not meant to stay the same. I wanted kids and she was studying to become a school teacher.  After she graduated and became a teacher she stated emphatically that she did not want to have kids, being a teacher was enough.  While I respected her choice, I thought she would change her mind.  I don’t know if she ever did change her mind.

At twenty-three I had enough saved up for a down payment on a house and Diane had a stable job with the Calgary Board of Education.  I had the time to look so when I found the house in SE Calgary I jumped at the chance to buy it.  A four level split with a hot tub and a pool table, a bachelors dream!  We talked about moving in when I bought it.  I did not put her name on the mortgage and it became clear we were destined to part ways.  Life can be funny and sometimes we all have turning points in life.  I hope Diane is happy and living a fulfilled life.

Lightning strikes us at times and my lightning was Shelley.  I fell very hard and for a time I had found my muse.  I wrote poetry for her and was completely in love.  Love can hurt and the day she told me she was pregnant and having an abortion was the most painful of all. I tried to stay with her, I tried to continue on loving her but the hurt was too much and our love could not survive.  She will always own a piece of my heart and a part of my dreams.

Bonny came into my life like a whirlwind, blowing strong through my heart. We shared a passion that was amazing and the excitement of new love swept us away.  I celebrated my thirtieth birthday with her and life was good.  Like all good things in life there can be a bad side.  Bonny could no longer have children.  She had two wonderful, frustrating teenage girls and was not interested in having any more.  Adoption was an option but some of our difficulties went beyond that.   We tried to stay together but being a step dad to teenagers and building a business can take its toll on a relationship.  After three years we decided to part ways.

I met Joanne at Roses pub in Kelowna it was a chance encounter and we hit it off.  I would not end up staying with Joanne as it became clear early on we were not meant for each other.  Joanne would give me the greatest gift of all, my daughter Marijke.  The best accident I have had in my entire life is my amazing little girl.  A moment etched forever on my heart is the day she was born.  Lying there all new, screaming her new found lungs out, I put my finger in her hand and she stopped.  She was suddenly still and the crying had silenced instantly.  I have been wrapped around her finger ever since, a love so strong that nothing can compare.

Michele was a fresh breeze of light and passion that caught my heart when I wasn’t looking.  Confused and afraid I jumped into a new relationship before my daughter was even born. It was a whirlwind that took us both to the Okanagan together.  I was moving to be near my daughter and she followed me along.  I think Michele fell pretty hard for me and the idea of a family together.  I was not ready.  A new city, new friends and new situations took its toll on Michele and she fell hard. I asked her to take a leap of faith and she kept falling.  I never caught her and she fell into a depression so deep I never want to see anyone there again.  A month in the psyche ward at the hospital took a devastating toll on us both and she came back a lost and scared little girl.  I was unable to help her as I was doing my best to save my business and spend time with my new baby girl.  Michele finally had to move away from Kelowna to find herself.  I hope she has found herself and found love.

Time is the only thing that we cannot stop and as I grow older I do grow wiser.  With women I am sure no man can say they are truly wise.   I met my wife through a mutual friend and started out as three amigos hanging out.  Krista was different than all the rest, her beauty was inside and she had no false pretenses.   We started out as friends until a fateful night when I fell on my head and woke up beside her in her bed.  I would like to say I remember that night, that it was amazing… I still remember nothing but falling on the curb(yes drunk) and waking up beside her.   The next five years were chaotic; we started as friends “with benefits” and grew stronger as friends.  Yet I was not ready to commit and most women would have left me.  I am still not sure why she stayed but am forever grateful she did.  Krista was pretty when we met but her beauty grows every day and now she the most beautiful woman in the world, inside and out.

I am not sure when I truly fell in love with my wife but it was unlike any I had known until then.  Deep, strong and unconditional it grew, until it bloomed into full awareness. After over five years I finally kneeled down to ask her for her hand in marriage and expressed that I do not know what I would do without her.   She said yes! And our planning began.  My Dad had been told he only had a year to live and we knew we were on a short timeline to get him to come to the wedding.

Twelve days before we were to get married at Crescendo at Big White I got a fateful call; come to Calgary we don’t know if you father will make it through the night.  I got on the next plane to Calgary and arrived at his bedside that evening.   In the middle of the night he woke up, sat up in bed, gasped, looked at me and wondered what the heck I was doing there?  The next morning the doctor commented on the miracle he was alive.    The next miracle was to fly to Kelowna and come to our wedding.

The community of Big White is a very special one.  We have so many people to thank for the support and love they gave us in order to have or special day.  The fire department provided oxygen for my Dad to make in comfortable, Jude made us an amazing meal, Sheila presided on a fantastic ceremony and Darcy set off the best fireworks ever.  Of course mother nature smiled down on us with a brilliant warm and sunny day.  At 420, on November 15, 2014 we were married in front of God, the sunset and many our best friends and family.  A new chapter in life is being written and I look forward to living it with my wife, my love , my soul mate.