No, that won't be him

Came home from work today, eventually went into the bedroom and saw the message light blinking on the answering machine, and thought "It's Jerry!"  Because of course my dead husband really isn't dead and is leaving me messages on the answering machine.  By the way... it wasn't Jerry.  It will never be Jerry.  Someday I'll probably understand that, and God, I wish it were five years from now, when possibly it won't hurt as much, maybe?  Or better yet, five years ago, and they can find the cancer early and treat it and save him, or better yet, five years ago and he never gets cancer, and he's healthy and he's still here and my life is as it should be, as it was, back when I had my honey with me, back when the world hadn't come to an end.

Just now I got out the videotapes I bought from Bill Windom of the 1998 Lookout Mountain Convention, and found the place on each day's tape that shows Jerry leading a song (one of the tapes was already wound to that spot).  The camera is pointing at the leader from the back of the tenor section, so I, who was in the alto section, am in the shot the entire time.  And there's Jerry, whom I haven't met yet on the Saturday, leading 383, and I'm singing along, not knowing that the next day my life is going to change forever, and so very obviously not knowing that almost 12 years later I'm going to be sitting on my couch in Illinois with tears streaming down my face as I watch this man whom I haven't met yet, the love of my life, a ghost on a TV screen.  And in the Sunday video he's leading 77t, of course, but is sharing the leading with someone else who wanted to lead that song, and they're leading it in 4, and I think that's the only time I've ever seen him lead it in 4, and I think it was because the other leader wanted to.  And if I remember right, it's after lunch, and I've already met him, and I was already so comfortable talking to this man, which was so unusual, since I'm almost always so awkward with new people, but I still didn't know what it all meant, what had just happened, that I'd finally met him, the one, the man of my dreams, the love of my life.

Please, I want to go back.  I want to start again and do it again and this time go more slowly, and this time have it come out differently, and when we get to our 10th anniversary year we still have decades and decades together ahead of us.  Please.