September approaches
September is fast approaching when children go back to school and the weather decides whether it will stay hot until October or will cool off and then reheat for an Indian summer. It is always a bittersweet month for me.
While others are sipping on pumpkin lattes and other pumpkin goodies, I am remembering the last few days I spent with Otto. Otto’s real name was Edward, but he had spent most of his adult life in electronics with the Navy and then as a contractor for DOD (Department of Defense).
His nickname came from his days in Vietnam. He used to repair the radios, Whenever he came into the spaces to work, the operators called him the “Auto Tune” man. He adopted the name Otto because he liked it better than Auto. So I didn’t know his real name until we stood in front of the Sarasota Justice of the Peace and I married him in 1993.
To me, Otto was an open book. He told me what he thought. He told me his hopes and fears. It never occurred to me that he was keeping secrets. But then, he was 45 and I was 31 when we married. It was naive of me to think that we knew everything about each other.
We met in the Navy.
In 1988 I went to bootcamp in Orlando. At the time the women went to Florida, and most of the men went to Michigan. In February it was warm enough that we could march in short sleeves. Many of us who went into the Navy that year were from colder climes. I wouldn’t say it was easy, but compared to Marine Corp or the Army, it was.
When I went to Corry Station for electronics and then CTM school, we weren’t even considered sailors yet. It was in the third week of school after AC and DC that I met Otto. He was our instructor in amplifiers. Because my brain was re-wiring to understand electronics, I took up the offer for after school study. I knew there was a spark, but I got to know him.
I knew then that I wanted to be with him for the rest of my life. Still, I had obligations to the Navy. I went to Misawa AFB Japan and he eventually retired. While I was in Japan we spoke every month for a half hour on the phone. He would call me one month and I would call him the next.
When I finished my tour in Japan, we both went to Panama. He was a contractor and lived on the Panama City side of the canal and I lived on the Colon side of the canal on an army base. My time in the Navy ended in 1994. We married in 1993, but I was unable to live with him until I left the Navy the following year.
We started our life in Panama City, Panama.
We had our good times. We had our bad times. We grew close. He was worried that I would leave him when I got my English B.A. I didn’t understand when he refused to show up to my graduation. He did show up afterwards though.
I didn’t need a B.A. I already had a career as an electronics tech. Plus being a Navy technician has a cachet to it. I could get a job with anyone anywhere because I was good at my job. However, one of the reasons I went into the Navy was to get the G.I. Bill. It was a goal I had made for myself when I was six years old.
I can still see myself at six, swinging on a homemade swing, and deciding that I would go to college and travel. By the time I got my college degree I had been to South Africa, Japan, Panama, and Germany. Plus I traveled around Europe.
So at 38 I started school again so I could finish the goal I made over thirty years earlier.
I didn’t realize when I graduated that I was stomping all over one of his insecurities. His first wife left him when she got an educational degree and started teaching.
Maybe I’m older now and wiser. I didn’t understand the extent of his abandonment issues. He was a premie, left in a hospital for someone else to raise. He was given to an older family because his issues meant he needed constant care until he was almost three. His foster father died when he was ten and then his foster mother, who was already in her 80s, began to have Alzhiemer’s.
When they took her away the State found him in her care. There was no record of him in the system. He was then put into the foster system. He was lucky that he went to a foster family, who he stayed with until he was 18.
Once he was 18, he joined the Army and was shipped immediately to Vietnam. He turned 19 there.
One of his friends told me that Otto’s greatest desire was to have a wife and family. So when he lost his first wife, remarried her, and lost her again, it hurt him to the core. I thought that he had two different wives. I didn’t find out until after his funeral that my assumptions weren’t true.
When I met Otto, I knew he was mine. We fit together like two pieces of one soul. I would never leave him. But, there were two times that we could have parted.
The first time was when he retired from the Navy and told me he was going to New Orleans. He said he would call me in two weeks. After two weeks I didn’t hear from him. I remembered his friend’s name and that he lived in Sarasota. I called the operator and got the number. I just wanted to find out where he was.
His friend’s wife answered the phone. When I said my name, she gave the phone to Otto and said, “it’s for you.”
He had thought that we had just had a fling and that I would forget him and move on. He was giving me an out. I think that it was a surprise that I would go to such lengths to find him.
The second time was when I was in Japan. It would have been so easy to forget what we had in the two years we were apart. There were times when I wondered if I had done the right thing. When it was time for my tour to end, he told me that he was going to Panama to be a contractor for the DOD
I called to get my next set of orders to Panama.
When I sat next to him while he was on that hospital bed, he was thin and frail. He was not a fraction of the man who had been my companion for twenty-one years. Still I was there. Of all the people in his life, I was the one who would not abandon him.
I was there when he took his last breath. I was there when I felt half of myself rip away from my heart and leave at high velocity. I knew he was gone at 9:45 p.m.
In September when the world starts to hold its breath and ready itself for fall, I lost him. Every September I lose him again.