A moment stuck in the past...

Last night I stayed up late watching the Olympics. Watching the women's gymnastics team lose the gold and clinch the silver but even more excitedly watching Michael Phelps grab first one record-breaking gold medal, and then another. I love to watch the Olympics - I've even been letting the girls stay up late to watch some of them with me because I believe that it's an important part of our world-culture to experience, if only through the TV; so many purely emotional human moments happen during the games in the midst of all that competition...it's really something to see.

After I watched the men's relay, I got to thinking about an old crush from my childhood - not an old high school sweetheart but a JUNIOR high school infatuation - really the first serious crush I ever had. His name was Mike Revers and I thought the sun rose and set around him when I was in the seventh grade. I was in heaven in eighth grade when he asked me "out" - which if you don't remember, in eighth grade pretty much means writing notes and holding hands in the lunch room...he broke my heart in a NOTE just a few weeks later; my first absolutely crushing heartbreak. I sobbed for hours and like any good ex-girlfriend, resolved to his suggestion that we "just be friends."

He had always been a swimmer. Not just a swimmer but a really GOOD swimmer. My freshman year in high school, I attended every swim meet I possibly could, mostly because my fourteen year old heart fancied itself still in love. Oddly enough, we really DID become friends - or maybe I was just part of his high school fan club...looking back I don't really know but then again, I didn't really care.

My last day at Waubonsie Valley High School was a sad one - my parents were moving us 12 miles down the road to an itty-bitty town called Oswego...which isn't so itty bitty any more but back then, it was NOWHERE. Mike snuck me off to a practice room in the music department and kissed me goodbye and I remember feeling elated and heartbroken all at the same time. Even after we moved, I continued to attend WVHS swim meets, sitting by his parents with a few of my other giggling girlfriends and screaming my lungs out while he swam. His parents were always so good to me, so sweet. He was their only son due to the loss of a younger brother years ago and they doted on him and in turn, doted on his friends.

Inevitably over the years I lost touch with him as I settled into life at my new school. I made new friends. I got my first real boyfriend and finally put that old childhood crush to rest. But every so often, even through college, I thought about Mike and wondered how he was doing. After all, these were the days before email - I knew that he had gone on to Notre Dame and that he was still swimming. But beyond that, nothing. Eventually he was just another memory - an old childhood friend from a long time ago.

So I'm not sure what made me plug his name into Google last night -- something about watching the Olympic swimming stirred some old memories. His name popped up in my mind and I found myself wondering if he was still swimming; wondering what he was up to.

I mean, don't get me wrong - I've googled lots of ex boyfriends. That's part of the fun of the Internet! Hell, I've googled most of Skippy's ex-girlfriends too, because I can be a snot about stuff like that sometimes. But I'd never even thought to Google good old Mike Revers until last night. It's been at least ten years since we last talked, maybe more.

The first link that came up was a blog about cancer. And in it, was a copy of Mike's obituary. I sat there in stunned silence, thinking that it couldn't possibly be the same person....then I got to his parents' names, to the blurb about how much he loved to swim, and I knew that it could be no one else. He died last year at just 28 from melanoma.

It's strange to find yourself feeling grief for someone you knew so long ago, someone who was a friend but not a friend....someone who played the role of your first love -- before you even knew what love really was and only thought that you did. There is a profound sadness in a discovery like this - that your lives took such different paths and that after so many years he should end in a few written words that try to sum up the man he became after the smiling quirky athletic teenager you once knew. He kept on swimming and he got married and like the rest of us, he grew up. I'm sure he was a very different person from the one I remember and yet, I doubt he was THAT different.

He is in my prayers today, as are his parents and his wife. I doubt his folks would even remember me, but I remember them very well - the cookies they brought to swim meets and the teasing they gave his "fan club" and the way his dad used to whistle to help keep him on pace while he swam - the way his mom used to hug me and how deeply they loved their son. I can only imagine how much he is missed.