Sarek 2

Sarek 2
Originally uploaded by Richard Gugins

Poor old Sarek probably won’t be with us much longer. He’s blind and suffers from arthritis. Still, he finds the food dish, the litter pan, any available heat vent and my lap where he now resides. Watching him navigate is comical. He puts his whiskers up against the wall and follows it along until he bumps into something. Memory plays a big role—the trailer isn’t all that big and he knows his way around it. We try not to complicate things by rearranging the furniture or leaving things in his way. All we can do at this point is love him and try to make him as comfortable as possible.

In so many ways I won the lottery back in 1992 when I ran into Maureen again. We first met back in the seventies when my roommate was driving for her first husband. She was Mrs. B then and I didn’t really pay all that much attention to her. I was just another whacked out cab driver friend of her husband’s and she barely noticed me in the crowd. A whole bunch of years and a whole lot of life went by. Suddenly we were both in the same place at the same time and both single. Checker Cabs no less! Not the most romantic of settings but it worked and the rest, as they say is history. It’s been almost sixteen years and I wouldn’t change a thing. She is still the best thing that ever happened to me.

When we first started going out together I remember telling my sister that Maureen loved cats, books and me and I didn’t even care if it was in that order. You see I love cats, books and her. The cats are of course, first and foremost since we are after all just the domestic couple our feline overseers hired to take care of them. The books are next since we are merely their custodians and then there’s each other. Us. I'd never been a part of an 'us' before. Before Maureen I spent twenty years convinced I was in love with someone who won't even speak to me today.

Unrequited lovemay make you feel all noble and such but in the end it’s really not all that satisfying. When the object of my affection remarried and left town, I took stock of my life and looked around. I was stuck in a job I hated so I quit and went back to driving. Then Maureen and I started seeing each other. She accepted me as a cab driver, something my unrequited love had not.