Chapter 39
by Dawn L. Rosa
Five days after Paul passed, I was driving home from work and saw his face. It appeared before me almost like that of a ghost in a smoky fog. I wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time, but I now believe that he wanted me to see him for the last time. Or perhaps he wanted to see me for the last time.
Paul was my one true love. He was the one who opened my heart to receive, understand, and allow love in. You see, I was an abused and neglected child. Growing up, I never knew what love was nor did I realize it even existed. When Paul came into my life, he changed all that. He changed everything. He changed me.
We met when I was a sophomore in high school. Paul was a handsome, sweet, and a very kind high school senior. He was patient, compassionate, and caring and made me feel like I was the most important person in the world. He was beyond special, almost heaven sent. Our souls connected, and I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. He felt the same way. We were inseparable for almost a year until he went into the service. Prior to going into basic training, he proposed to me. I accepted with all my heart, knowing without question that we were destined to be together forever. While he was away, we wrote to each other daily, not letting a single day go by without reaching out to one another, telling stories, sharing dreams, sending love. But our story didn’t have the happily-ever-after ending I longed for. When Paul returned home from the service, he was a very different man, changed perhaps by what he experienced serving our country. I was different too. Add the fact that his mother couldn’t bear the thought of living apart from him and asked him to choose between her and me, and our relationship ended before I knew it. Blood is thicker than water, they say. When push came to shove, Paul chose his mom and I was left with a broken heart.
Time went by, wounds healed, and we each married someone else and started our own families. Our paths crossed years later when I ran into him and learned he was going through an ugly divorce. I almost gave him my number in the event he needed a friend, but I decided against it. I was married with a family, and I wasn’t all that sure I could trust myself around him. He was suffering then, way beyond what I had seen or even imagined. Visitation rights to his children were being withheld. He was depressed and distraught and started drinking. I didn’t know any of this. Thoughts of Paul faded into the rhythm of everyday life until one day, out of the blue, I received a call from a longtime friend saying Paul had died. Died? My heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t breathe. But how? Why? Oh God, no. Not Paul. Not my Paul. I found out he took his life with his own hands. I was heartbroken, crushed, horrified. I reeled with the very real pain of never seeing him again. What happened? Could I have done something to help?
I received answers to my questions on the Purple Papers that Roland gave to me during his presentations. On the first one, Roland had drawn a table and two end chairs. There were a lot of dots on the table. I had no idea what it meant, but somehow I realized this paper wasn’t for me. It belonged to someone else; it was meant for Paul’s mother. I had made amends with her at Paul’s funeral when we came together in our grief, forgiving her for asking her son to make a choice between us. As the mother of two boys now, I finally understood the motivation behind her actions so many years ago. A mother at the tender age of sixteen, she was a child herself when she had Paul and literally grew up with him. She only wanted the best for son and thought she alone could provide it. I realized what she did back then, she did out of love for him. She didn’t know the ramifications that choice would have on her son or me. I could see how devastated she was by her loss, as was I. We tried to help each other through the pain. I made peace with her for her sake, for Paul, for me.
I brought that Purple Paper home and tucked it into a box in my closet, deciding that it wasn’t the right time to give it to his mother. I would bring it to her when she was strong enough to see it. That time came on its own, when one day I found it lying on the closet floor, with the door open so I could easily see it. I hadn’t taken it out of the box. “Who did?” I asked myself as I put it back where I had been keeping it. Days later, the closet door opened again. What was this about? Then it hit me that I needed to bring this paper to his mother. She cried when I handed it to her. She knew immediately what it meant. Through her tears, she explained that the table and chairs at Paul’s house looked exactly like the ones drawn on the Purple Paper. Same placement, same setting, same everything. The dots we saw? They were the pills that Paul took that ended his life. There were so many he hadn’t taken them all. His mother told me there were still pills on the table when Paul was found.
Years later I met Roland again and received another Purple Paper. Roland had written the message as he received from Paul. It said, “He’s sorry he didn’t take you to the last dance.” That last dance would have been our wedding dance. Roland remembered seeing an altar when he wrote that down. I wasn’t surprised. I had never stopped loving him, and I believe he felt the same way too.
Messages from Paul kept coming. He said, “I thought this out for a minute—I couldn’t get my head around it anymore. I didn’t plan anything.” Another Purple Paper years later read, “Paul spent the last two weeks really nervous about his illness. Four days before he passed, he knew there was nothing else to do. You did alright,” referring I believe to my decision not to give him my number when we ran into one another during his divorce.
Another paper read, “Paul didn’t see his life changing. Everything was moving so fast. When I passed away, I saw my grandmother (and Mary). Wow! This stuff is so real!!!”
He wanted me to know that I “deserve true love” in another paper: “Paul stopped telling you what he was going through, so how would you know (he says)? I wanted you to be mine forever. I wanted you to know that you do deserve true love.”
Our love for one another was and still is so strong. After he passed away, all the letters I wrote to him while he was in the service were found. He had saved them for the past twenty years. He’s still writing to me from heaven, filling my heart and soul with the knowledge that love is unending and eternal.
My life and love for Paul have come full circle. The experiences we shared on earth and from heaven led me to a place where dreams and possibilities live, where second chances are freely given, where past transgressions are truly forgiven, and where love never ever dies.