Dumpster-Dancer

Somehow in her drunken stupor Bridget managed to track us down. When she stumbled into the cafe where we were hiding from her, George her current husband, seemed pretty annoyed. After all, she'd just recently been arrested for DUI. He was not happy that she'd found the keys he had hidden from her and driven drunk at night in the busy city to find us.

To prevent a scene, I persuaded her to go for a ride with me. We wound up walking a deserted beach alone 'till dawn as she slowly sobered up and unwound the greater story to me.

On that beach I fell in love. I fell in love with a woman wounded. I fell in love with what could have been. I fell in love with what could have been were it not for that stupid promise turned evil by . . . the best of intentions. I've never gotten over that night.

In her youth Bridget felt like she'd won the lottery when Sam, the chisel jawed, earnest, straight-arrow cop changed a tire for her then asked her out. Raised by Evangelical hypocrites who abused her horribly and sexually, Bridget felt safe in the arms of this most moral and chaste of men. A brief romance later, they married. Shortly after that Sam made the fateful promise that killed any hope for their joy.

Sam's father, dying young, asked on his death bed that Sam look after his mother. Bridget didn't resent that promise. She would not have loved Sam so much if he were not the kind of man to look after his widowed mother. But Sam, a literalist, took the promise as an absolute one. He didn't just look after his mother in the casual sense. He took that promise as his highest obligation in life, a holy crusade of sorts. Each of the normal in-law conflicts between Bridget and her Mother-in-law, then were viewed under the microscope of THE PROMISE.

Maybe Bridget, wounded soul that she was, needed a bit more attention and love than normal. Still every woman wants to feel like she's number one in her own home. Due to the promise, Sam made sure that she always knew she was number two, to Mom. This chewed at Bridget. She acted out. Each time she acted out, she forced Sam to choose between her and THE PROMISE. Always THE PROMISE won. And Bridget drank. Maybe she drank to drown the pain. Maybe she just drank to drink. No one will ever know, because one night Bridget drank so much that she never woke up, leaving a huge hole in the life of everyone who loved her.

But that night walking alone with an old drunk, I mystically found myself in the presence of the spirited, hopeful young woman whose soul still lived the in the alcohol bloated body. She had only wanted to be loved. Within that, she would have been happy to let Sam look after his Mom. But Sam interpreted the promise as Mom first, Bridget second.

For a wounded woman who needed love, or at least for the Bridget I saw that night on that beach, being second to Mom just could not work.

Bridget's marriage to Sam failed. George loved her, but it was too little too late.

I think our promises matter. I think we should keep our word. I think we should do what's right. But that night, I knew that Sam's Dad had not been asking his son to put the mother of his grandkids in second place. Sam's Dad meant the promise in the normal sense. “Keep an eye out for your mother.”

And even if Grandpa had actually been asking Sam to promise to put Mother over wife and children, asking that would have been so immoral as to void the promise. We make our promises in the normal sense. It's understood that we are promising to do our best under whatever unknown circumstances the future may hold.

Knowing that my wife prefers not to live alone, I promised that I'd try to outlive her if I can. That means I should take care of myself; that I should refuse my suicide fantasy; that I should seek medical care when needed. It doesn't mean that I can absolutely guarantee that I will out live her. It most certainly does not mean that I should take her life should mine look like it's running out, for that would be the only guaranteed way to literally keep the promise.

More than anything it does not mean that I should sell my soul or my purpose in life to keep the promise. Should one of those situations ever arise where a man should put his life on the line for a cause greater than himself, I hope that I would risk death if need be. Promise be damned. And I would not be worthy of her love if I didn't at least aspire to be willing to try to be brave should that ever be called for.

Promises have a normal meaning. To put more weight on them than that runs the risk of them turning evil.