Kaiserslautern ... and a FB friend request.

You know how with FaceBook, some old friend,  lover, or even a relative can pop up out of nowhere?  Some good, some bad, some embarrassing, speaking for myself anyway.  Earlier this week I got a "friend request" like that.  The back story.  During the Vietnam war, my uncle was stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany.  He fell in love, got married and lived there, for awhile.  Being just a kid at the time, I remember wondering what the hell a "Kaiseslautern" was. 

He was an artist, an American artist in Germany, and he found quite a bit of success there.  It sounds like the perfect, romantic love story.  American boy meets German girl, they fall in love and live happily ever after.  Well, it's not quite the way it turned out, and it was unfortunate.  This brief story is the result .

My Uncle Ted was "The Man" in my eyes.  He was my fathers younger brother, a multi-sport athlete in high school, and he excelled in all of them.  He was my idol.  The classic small town teenager and star athlete, so of course he had a way with the ladies too.  My definition of "Cool".

My memories of Ted were two fold.  Before he left, and the return home.  Before he was drafted I recall our fishing trips to the dam on Lake Tyler, which happened to be where he introduced me to chewing tobacco, and cigarettes.   The greatest all occurred many years later in Galveston, Texas, but that's another story.  I do remember the holidays when we would all be together.  The most significant early memory was when he was preparing to leave for war.  We we're  at my grandmothers home in" Wilmer - Hutchins", a small town just south of Dallas.  My grandmothers house was on a hill overlooking interstate 45.  In those days with no a/c , we would spend a lot of time outdoors on the porch.  We enjoyed the breeze and spent time talking and watching the big rigs passing in the distance.  I can still clearly remember those sounds and smells.  It was in the late 60's and the war was beginning to wind down. Still, soldiers were dying and my Grandmother was a widow about to send her youngest child to war. Even I could feel anxiety at the thought of something happening to Ted.

After basic training, Ted was stationed in Kaiserslautern.  Our news came by letter to my grandmother or the occasional long distance phone call to my Dad.  He had met a woman, and they were to be married.  We were all excited and everyone was so happy for Ted.  The chance to meet her took much longer than we anticipated.  They did not come back to the states immediately after he was discharged.  I'm not sure how long it was before we met Bridgett (Not her real name), but they did come visit us.

When I met her, it was adolescent lust, I immediately had a huge crush on her and her accent.   She was absolutely gorgeous.  The marriage started off well, Ted worked for Bridgett's father who owned a construction company and things were going fine.  It was his creative side, and his early interest in sketch, oil paint and water color, that prompted a new path.  His hobby  became business.  Success followed and one thing led to another.  Eventually they opened an art gallery and began to travel all over Europe. I later learned that Ted had a become a European celebrity of sorts, and maybe this was the beginning of the end.

Their divorce was the first  in my family, ever.  Sooooo, how does he respond?  I heard stories of three day parties and weeks that disappeared on train rides.  As I grew older and we became close, he would confess to heavy drinking binges and and blackouts, but never any explicit details.  All in all, he never really explained anything.  He had remarried a wonderful woman who loved him and cared for him and the past was the past.

Upon the the move back from Germany to Houston, I noticed a difference in Ted right away, like he was preoccupied or something.  Little did I know, that he was suffering a broken heart, or my conclusion anyway, he never told me what happened or why.  He just stumbled through the rest of life with little or no excitement, no drive.  We still had some great times but it was not the same.  I tried a few times, when we would be sitting in a boat fishing and drinking beer, to get him to tell me about Bridgette, but he never would.  I asked him if he was still in love her,  as I thought he was.  He would never confirm or deny, he just managed to change the conversation.

My recent encounter on FaceBook brought all these thoughts and emotions roaring back.  Never has anyone made me laugh like my uncle Ted, I have so many fond memories of him.  I would have done anything to ease his pain, but was never able to.  Ted died in 2003 of heart failure, hmmmm? His wife called me, and when I arrived she was there alone with Ted, no coroner or police or ambulance.  I walked into the small home cluttered with Ted's art supplies and paintings, and made my way to their bedroom.  He was lying on his left side with his arms folded and he looked very peaceful, almost as if he were in deep thought about an art project or what was, and what might have been.

One day I hope to make a trip to Kaiserslautern, to speak with Bridgett, and see first hand what so inspired my uncle.  The place where he began to fulfill a young mans dreams of love, beauty and passion.  There is no doubt he loved it there, and had things been different, I am sure he would have remained.  Life is funny.  If I'm lucky, maybe I can visit, and experience my uncle again.  I knew him well and I loved him, but I wish I could have understood him better.  I look forward to time spent in a small smoke filled "biergarten" in Kaiserslautern, left to my own thoughts and imagination.  Get a better insight on my uncle, the ghosts of yesterday and the possibilities for tomorrow.

From Texas