Friday, August 28th, 2020. 5:45 PM.
Eileen, my Confidante
I’m having the sweetest thoughts of us in conversation, Eileen
At 12:10 AM, instead of going to bed, I had to start up my computer again and write down for you what I’m thinking about us.
Eileen: “Alright Mark, what are you thinking that is so sweet about us?”
Mark: “I’m thinking I want to call you, maybe – even though you told me to push you out of my mind and forget about you. I’m thinking of writing a new version of a little conversation we had in 1974 about going to see you on Great Island and going out dancing; and, if I kept that date with you, we could spend the night together. The date of that conversation must have been a few days before June 19th.
Eileen: “And what is your imaginary new version of that actual conversation, Mark?”
Mark: “It goes like this:” Eileen, we must not spend the night together because we aren’t married. If we did spend the night together, we would be guilty; and that guilt would hurt our relationship; and then, we might break up. I don’t want us to break up, Eileen. I want us and our relationship to continue forever.”
Eileen: “Mark, why do you want us to continue forever?”
Mark: “Because you are that special to me, Eileen.”
Eileen: “What do you mean by special, Mark?”
Mark: “I mean that you are exactly who I want for my confidante and for intimacy and love and conversations about life and the things that matter. I want for us to be one in every way – spirit, soul and body and heart and mind and imagination and memories of our life experiences together.”
Mark: “I want to see you again, Eileen. I want to see your face and your eyes looking at me. I want to hear the sound of your voice speaking to me. I want for us to be able to be comfortable with each other; so, we can have honest and free-and-easy conversations.” [Eileen, I’m also tired. And, to be honest and realistic as I reread my writing a day later, I have to say that I don’t feel up to doing all these things that I’m imagining and writing to you. But, on the other hand, I don’t know if God has plans for us; and that He is very able to make me/us able to do things we may not feel up to doing. And I understand that in being very honest about this, I lay myself open to being told: “Well, if you’re not confident about being able to carry out your imaginings, Mark, then you shouldn’t send them to Eileen. What do you expect her to do with your imaginings? She may simply think you’re just an old fool in need of “professional” help. She may not even be reading your writing for that very reason.”]
Eileen: “Conversations about what, Mark?”
Mark: “About what we think.”
Eileen: “You want to know what I think, Mark?”
Mark: “Yes.”
Eileen: “What I think about what subject?”
Mark: “I guess what I mean, Eileen, is that I want to enjoy listening to you talking to me, your best buddy, your confidante [I wish to be] in ordinary, plain old talking about things – just communing with you – like two bluebirds in the paradise of being together chirping to each other about sweet nothings. [You told me, Eileen, that you like sweets. Sweet nothings contain no calories. They just make our hearts beat faster and so we burn up calories and get slimmer as we just love in each other’s presence in love and kindness and loving kindness.] And Eileen, if we are married, then there won’t be any guilt about spending our nights together. And we will enjoy God’s blessings in our marriage. And, Eileen, if I may enjoy your permission to be bold about my thoughts of your marriages . . .“
Eileen: “What are your thoughts, Mark, about my marriages?”
Mark: “I was just musing that, maybe, [I don’t know] that they didn’t continue because you married those who are not your true husband.”
Eileen: “And who is my true husband, Mark?”
Mark: “Well, Eileen, I was thinking that, maybe, the one you spent a night with on June 19th-20th, 1974 on Great Island may be your true husband, Eileen.”
Eileen: “And what makes you think, mark, that you might be my true husband?”
Mark: “Well, it is written that: “What God has brought together, let not man put asunder.” -Matthew 19:1-6.
Eileen: “You think, Mark, that, maybe God brought us together on that night of June 19th-20th, 1974 – because it is His Will for us to be husband and wife?”
Mark: “Yes, Eileen, I did think it.”
Eileen: “As I recall that night, mark, we didn’t actually go all the way.”
Mark: “That is true, Eileen.”
Eileen: “Do you have any ideas about why we didn’t consummate?”
Mark: “Yes, Eileen, I do.”
Eileen: “And what is your understanding about that, mark?”
Mark: “My understanding is that we didn’t consummate because we were not married; so, I did not feel freely at liberty with you and confident to do so; our relationship did not have God’s blessing for us to go all the way, yet. It is written: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the LORD.” -Proverbs 18:22. King James Version. Since we were not married; we were not husband and wife, yet; and so, we did not enjoy God’s favor in our relationship, yet. And Eileen, I distinctly remember somethings that occurred the next day. First, we went to URI where we attended your children’s literature class. Then, we went shopping in Wakefield. I told you I wanted to buy some undershorts. We met a friend of yours. And you spoke with her for a few minutes. Finally, we went back to your parents cottage on Great Island. Sometime during that afternoon I found myself all alone in the cottage. I think you went to the upper room bedroom to take a nap. I felt very forlorn lonely. I thought of you being in that upstairs bedroom. I had never been up there. It seemed to be off limits to me. I was not invited to go up there. I may have imagined that you really wanted to be alone now; and just sleep quietly and soundly as a baby in perfect rest and deep sleep. I just went to my car and drove back to Woonsocket. Maybe it turned out that way because we weren’t married; so, we were guilty of having spent the night in bed together without being husband and wife. We did not have the Lord’s favor. We were disobedient – like Adam and Eve after they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. [I hope, Eileen, that, someday you and this one may eat, instead, from the tree of life in the paradise of God as children of God living in His favor as His people. And that He will yet bless us and we can be in love and in His joy and His liberty.] And, maybe [I don’t know] you were having some similar kind of guilt feelings, too; and that may have been why you just went off to take a nap upstairs without talking to me; and that left me feeling lonely.
Mark: “Eileen, maybe the reason I think of you ever day is because you are that one that the Author of life has written in to be my wife – and has placed His Love in my heart for you – because that is what He has ordained to be – you and me husband and wife in His Love and His Salvation in His Family of true believers.”
Mark: “It is now 1:25 AM. I am going to bed, Eileen . . . all alone in body; but with you in Spirit, Eileen.”
1:32 AM. August 28th, 2020. Mark David richer. I’m thinking about mailing this letter to you, Eileen, along with a Valentine’s Day card that I have owned since January 12, 2009. I wrote about you and that card on my blog. I don’t know if you have been reading my blog, Eileen. And, I don’t know if you are reading the very many text messages I’ve written to you since May 27th – the day you called me and also texted me that it was nice to have talked with me on the phone and that I was welcome to call you once in a while if I felt like talking. And we spoke for about a half hour. And I don’t know if you have read the several letters I’ve sent to you by paper mail.
https://marksimaginings.com/2020/08/25/eileen-i-have-a-nearly-12-year-old-valentines-day-card/
PS. I’m still “getting by” these days . . . but like an old soldier whose “uniform” has become tattered from age and so is wearing out, I’d have to be refreshed by God, I suppose, to be enabled to get married at 68 and 3 months shy of my next birthday.
“The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes his steps.” -Proverbs 16:9 ESV.
Nevertheless, I was thinking a few minutes ago as I was folding my quilt after taking a late morning nap: Even if I die, I believe that wherever the good Lord places me, Eileen will soon show up – like she did at St. Charles School in 4th-grade; and at Cold Spring Park late one summer evening when we were about 9-10 years old; and in my homeroom at Woonsocket High School in September of 1968; and on Sunday afternoons with the Rhode Island Hikers Club in 1974 {please see the story on the blog: “Eileen’s Valentine.}.
Neil Diamond- September morn-
Eileen, please let the peace of God rest upon you. I’m at peace right now. I’m quite calm. All I want to do now is sit down in my comfortable chair with a cup of cold PUR-filtered-and refrigerated water and relax in quietness as I look out the porch door window in front of my chair. Please don’t be upset. Please don’t be thinking that you have to command me to stop thinking of you. They are “only” my thoughts of love for you, that’s all – loving thoughts of Eileen. And, maybe, they are also from the Lord, Eileen, who loves you and is calling you to faith in the Son of God – Jesus Christ.
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes, I will give the right to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.” -Revelation 2:7. NIV.
“Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground – trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” -Genesis 2:8, 9. NIV.
Another memory of us, Eileen. It was at the beach, George’s Beach, perhaps; that’s where we always went to the beach during “the summer of ’74.” And once we were standing on that beach and you gave me some instructions. You told me you were going to breathe into me. And so, we kissed and you breathed your breathe into my mouth and into my lungs. And the, you told me to kiss you and to breathe my breathe into your mouth and into your lungs. And I did it. We did it. We breathed into each other, Eileen. That was a very sweet and intimate experience we had together, Eileen. It was deeply beautiful and lovely and pleasantly exciting to me – even now as I write about that personal experience with you — beautiful and young lady/woman Eileen; the most special young lady/woman I ever was intimate with – it is still pleasantly and intimately exciting to me. And I long for more intimacy with you, Eileen, to be filled again by the breathe of our mouth and the breathe of your lovely lungs and thus receive what Eileen gives me, according to her instructions to me in love. And Eileen, it may be that by obeying your loving instructions to me in accordance with the LORD God’s Spirit instructing you, that my own selfishness will pass away by you blowing it away with your lovely breathe and your lovely life and your lovely spirit; and by my yielding the way to your love and your spirit entering into me, in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ our Savior.
Jesus at the Center by DARLENE ZSCHECH
“. . . then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” -Genesis 2:7. ESV Study Bible.
Eileen, that account in Genesis is about Adam becoming a living natural man; however, there is more to human life than being natural – there is also an opportunity that God gives us to become spiritual, by being born again. Jesus speaks about this to Nicodemus in John 3.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+3&version=ESV
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Mark's Imaginings 