[dekeguy]

This is a rather unusual thread for me to be posting to, but it does strike close to home. My first really great love and I grew up together. From seventh grade through highschool, staying close despite my being away for two years while my Dad was in London, through college, until I left for initial active duty. We had hopes and plans but sometimes these things do not work out as anticipated. She decided that she did not want to be an Army wife and I was on duty in Europe for three years and then more while I did an MA(Oxon). By the time I got back and started law school we had drifted apart and despite a bitter-sweet attempt to sort things out in the couple of weeks before law we were history. Midway through 2L I was called up and deployed forward. I heard nothing from her while I was in Iraq and when I later returned to finish Law School. Then I did an LLM (BVC) in the UK to qualify for the English Bar and when I returned to the US so I could begin to take over some of my Dad's international practice I saw an obit for her father who had died that week. What hit me like a sledge hammer was that in his obit it mentioned that he was pre-deceased by his daughter who had died while I was deployed. I did not know and as both her mother and father were now dead I had no easy way of finding out what happened. I finally found her obit in a small town newspaper where they used to have a summer house. She had been diagnosed with an advanced and aggressive form of cancer and died within weeks of its discovery. Since then I have been unable to completely shake off the feeling that I missed the one great love of my life. I have a reasonable social life and an incumbent "favorite female" but she is aware that I cannot seem to go the the next level of a relationship. I am afraid that something crucial is deeply scarred and I don't know when or if I will be able to get over it. Life goes on but something is diminished.