Once upon a time...unattainable

As teenagers, we played together in a community brass band. The bandmaster and Chris' high school music teacher was a Pied Piper, rounding up the most musically promising kids and piling them into the Kombi headed to band practice. Chris was included in this group. This man [my Dad], this band, this music; all became so important to Chris. He had no idea how lasting his love of music would become or how it would ultimately steer the course of his life. He was young and could never quite remember what day band practice was on, so he rode his bike to school early every day. Such disappointment when there was no Kombi parked at the band room.

I was fourteen and Chris was fifteen and he wasn't even slightly on my radar. He attempted some fumbling moves in the back of that Kombi van but I thought we were the kind of friends that have fun in a group but nothing more. We went our separate ways in 1981 when I headed overseas to settle down and start a family. Chris left Melbourne and started his own family. They continued their involvement in brass banding and he kept his connection with my family (but not really with me).

We would not see each other for the next 20 years until 2001 when my brother, Gary, had a catastrophic stroke. He lived Adelaide at the time and was not expected to survive. At 7 months pregnant, I flew down to see Gary and say my goodbyes. The first person I saw at the hospital was Chris as he made himself available to help in any way he could. He was battling his own illness at the time but I was completely unaware of that. We were both married to other people so I saw him as a really caring and considerate friend of our family. Someone I once knew. I had no idea at that time that he would eventually end up helping to raise the child I was carrying.

Not six months later, my father passed away. Chris considered my father as his musical mentor and the man responsible for instilling his love of music so he flew to Sydney for the funeral and through my tears, there he was. This pattern of being present in my life at difficult times was not unnoticed.

After his stroke, we moved my brother interstate to live nearby. I had a call from Chris a few years later to say he was in Sydney on business and he was on his way by train to visit my brother at his nursing home. Let me make it crystal clear that very few friends visited my brother. It makes people feel uncomfortable to visit a young person living in aged care so I was impressed to hear that he was making such an effort. It was a steamy hot Sydney summer day and I could hear Chris clearly puffing on the phone as he headed from the train station. I called my sister and suggested we pick him up after the visit and drive him to the airport to save him the effort. We stopped at the pub on the way and talked. I wrote an email the next day to thank him for making the effort and that started a flow of communications that became some of the best conversations of my life. We were both divorced and exploring new freedoms and, although we lived in different states, there was something special going on. We shared a love of management theory, philosophy and we were both amateur analysts of everything served up on the news and social media. We spent months chatting privately online; and I mean setting the alarm for 5 am so that we could have a catch up and virtual coffee together on the old Instant Messenger before work (he in Melbourne and me in Sydney). Evenings we were back online with a glass on wine in hand until all hours. It was exciting and different. He was intelligent and funny, caring and sometimes flat out difficult. My distance relationship with him was a challenge but worth pursuing and he felt the same about me.

He worried about starting a relationship with me knowing that his illness would ultimately determine our time together. When I said it didn't matter to me, he cried. I loved to hear him telling our story and the fact that he had always thought of me as unattainable. I had no idea what he was talking about. Much later, Chris told me that he was intent on becoming my husband when he realised we were both free. He made me feel something I had never known before; that feeling of absolute and unconditional love; and to know how it felt to be adored; just as you are. I didn't have to lose weight, or change myself and that felt so different. We were in it together, we had this wonderful bond and the great fortune to have ten years. As I look back on my life so far, I am so proud of our relationship and so thankful that Chris came into my life. Totally attained.