Never Too Late to Heal a Heartbreak - Just Speak Up
By Janet Grace Riehl
I healed a 40-plus-year-old heartbreak at my high school reunion by speaking a simple truth at the right moment.
The purpose of reunions, most deeply, ought to be to re-unite us not only with those we once knew back in the day, but with ourselves. I experienced this healing balm at the mixer the first night of our reunion.
When I heard someone call out the familiar name of an old boyfriend, all my innards gave a lurch and squeeze. One morning, mysteriously and conveniently, he had seemingly forgot we knew each other and erased me from his memory banks.
Someone at his elbow called me to his attention, and he joyfully called out my name as if he couldn’t be happier to see me. I wasn’t quite ready for this intensely happy welcome when I still remembered nights of tears, playing sad songs on piano, and having to watch him with the new girlfriend he instantly started squiring around. In a side-ways maneveur, I moved to the other side of the table to talk to the woman he eventually married and had children with.
In the course of the evening he and I stepped outside in the evening heat and quiet to renew our acquaintanceship. We had a good conversation and began to get a feel for the people we’d become over the years. Finally, I felt comfortable enough to say what I needed to say.
Very gently I told him, “You really hurt me.”
“I did?”
“Yes. You used to meet my bus in the morning. Then, one morning you didn’t. Just like that you stopped speaking with me and started going around with a new girlfriend without properly breaking up with me.”
“I messed up.”
“Yes, you did. You asked about the role of music in my life. Well, for a long period after that, music was my solace and my healing balm.”
“I’m glad you felt you could tell me. This is heavy, but in a good way.” And, he gave me a little hug.
When I came back home that night, my father was waiting up. “You’ll never guess who I saw or what happened tonight,” I told my father.
When I said the boy/man’s name and related the story, my father was amazed and pleased. “After all these years,” he said. “I guess there’s some consolation in that. Some closure.” No one more so than my father could really appreciate what this meant to me, because he had been there first hand and had helped the first stage of my healing…through music.
My father used to bandage my knees when I was a school girl and jumped out of swings. He had an uncanny closeness to both of his daughters, understanding our hurts as well as our triumphs…and that sometimes the triumph was something as ordinary as getting up in the morning and going back to school with a broken heart and a cloud of gossip swirling around me.
I say, “Thank heavens for gentle fathers”–father’s who don’t like to see their little girls get hurt and are there for them as they grow up and help them grow up into big girls…which seems to never end.
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Visit Janet Grace Riehl’s blog “Riehl Life: Village Wisdom for the 21st Century” at http://www.riehlife.com for more thoughts and information about making connections through the arts, across cultures, generations, and within the family. You can also read sample poems and other background information from “Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary” on Janet’s website. |
