A stocky guy with crutches, a threadbare satin aqua blue jacket, and a wide energy grin had just dropped his keys on the sidewalk next to us.  I picked them up for him, not really looking at him that much, continuing my conversation with my friend Helen at their apartment complex.

A gregarious talker, the man Ed somehow ended up getting my number from Helen the next day. He called  me to tell me how heroic I had been to pick up his keys for him. That's how he was, always putting a positive spin on everything, and grateful for anything. We talked briefly, and then I agreed to meet him at a restaurant.

That night at the Mississippi Grill I liked him right away during our easy conversation. Then he reached across the table, and took my hand with his large hand. It wasn't a come on, he was just a super warm guy. It was touching, there was an immediate comfort level.

I had been just destroyed by a divorce many years before. By the time it was over there was such a palpable level of mistrust for my former husband that I didn't even want to be in the same room with him. He wasn't violent, there was just so much mistrust  that the feeling  had become lethal. For a while, the only men I felt comfortable being around were my three brothers.

I remember looking  up at the pipes, having just taken refuge in my brother's basement after  the separation. I knew at that exact moment that my husband was really going to do this. He wasn't going to change his mind. And that full, sickening atmosphere began to descend totally over my reality. No... it was worse than that.

It had early become a total, childlike trust in my husband. Not very smart for an adult, but I didn't know that then. Now I had been so used, so manipulated, that there was nothing left. How could I still be in shock for this long? I felt like the " Fool On The Hill."

I had gone through a somewhat similar thing with my mother as a teenager. A terrible misunderstanding and complete falling out. ...A person only a mother could love.... 

 But my husband was the one I could forever trust-- He understood all that, he understood me, he loved me.

 This was an exact emotional repeat. Rejection from the person I trusted the most.  ... I couldn't take the level of pain. Would anyone ever love me for being who I was?

And then everything else started to go wrong in my life. It got bizarre.Then it got scary. It was just too much to be a coincidence, how could so many totally off-the-wall things be happening to me all at once? It was like the devil had started a project on me. On and on it went, blow after blow...until I wondered if I would survive.

 But I gradually rebuilt my life,  staying single for 16 years. I was determined not to be a pathetic woman who couldn't be happy without a man. I drew a lot of happiness from my spiritual life, and  I never looked for a man again, after that fiasco,  literally leaving the matter entirely in God's hands. A Hollywood ending was extremely unlikely.

But Ed and I started dating regularly and everything was working. He went to his job all day and then ran around doing things every night. I could hardly keep up with him, even with his severe polio handicaps. "This is disability"!  I laughed.

Whenever I stood in my parking lot at night,  seeing him off,  I didn't want him to go. I was immediately wistful and forlorn as soon as he got in his car to drive away.

He always put a somewhat cold wall up, though,  as he watched me as he was driving away in his Chevy... he wasn't going to allow himself to miss me yet.

He was divorced too. Same experience as me-- He felt betrayed, lied to, used. He had almost gone in an iron lung at 9 years old, totally paralyzed and in isolation, hundreds of miles from his family and friends. After 10 surgeries, physical therapy, countless other things,  he was able to walk again at 18.  His family sacrificed for years, not able to have a normal life. After a long struggle, he finally landed a great job at IBM with good pay and benefits. This was even before ADA. They  didn't hire handicapped people much back then.

Then after 10 years of a very happy marriage, a stunning announcement from his wife, " I don't love you any more." Ripped from his adored young children, left to live alone in an apartment with a tendency for dangerous pneumonia. Almost skating down the icy sidewalk in the dark after work. Clicking along with his crutches, balancing with difficulty, not falling this time. Sleeping alone,  hearing the cars on the freeway, wondering if there was anyone in the whole world who  cared.

Maybe the polio helped, he had already dealt with the experience of having his life totally destroyed.

We were exactly alike. We had the same background,  the same personality, the same values. We talked obsessively until we were 99% sure. We  convinced each other that we would never leave. Then we got married.

 Nine years now,  one of those rarest things-- an ideal match. He still hugs me and kisses me all the time. He can't get enough. All those years paralyzed, a nine year old, alone and in pain  in a hospital bed. Undergoing terrifying treatments and procedures. A sensitive, loving boy ripped away from his family in isolation. The lonely teen that was never the same, waiting through endless operations.

I realize now that I have been looking for this for my whole life. I wanted to be accepted for who I was,  to be totally loved. It was more important to me than anything. I had a good family, friends,  but there was  always a slight ache, and sometimes, deep pain,  throughout my whole life. I could never get enough.

We both like and  accept each other completely, not trying to change the other.  Our love does not seem to have a limit, to give or to receive. Like the ocean, it fills up the empty places. It is ever growing.

When we die, we will still cross over,  deep in each other's souls.