Feelings, nothing more than feelings…

I was watching Grey’s Anatomy last night, anyone else hooked on it (?), and the last 5 minutes just tore me up and made me wonder a few things. For those of you who didn’t watch it, and who don’t know what it is about, it’s like a newer, hipper ER, like ER was back in its heyday. There’s one surgeon (nicknamed McDreamy) and a doctor who are married to each other but there’s an intern who was seriously involved with the surgeon at one time. They are what this post is about, or more specifically the surgeon and the intern who had been involved at one time.

So here’s the recap of the last 5 minutes so that you can understand why I have these questions. The intern ended up in a bomb situation and when the surgeon found out that it was her, at that moment it was like an epiphany for the surgeon that he still had feelings for the intern that he may have thought were gone or had been suppressing them, whatever it was, it was like when he heard that she was the one keeping her hand on a bomb that was inside a man in order to keep it from going off, something buried deep inside shifted for him. It was a tangible thing that you could feel - this realization that hit him like a ton of bricks that she could be gone forever at any moment. Patrick Dempsey says more with his expressive eyes above a surgical mask than most actors ever convey through their whole bodies while talking (he’s performing brain surgery down the hall from the bomb and can’t evac).

Anyway, the chief bomb tech played by the handsome Kyle Chandler, said that he knew that he had been this a$$ who had been yelling at her but he needed her to listen to him in order to get the bomb out and he knew that she could do it, so if she needed to imagine he was someone she liked in order to get through this, then to imagine whomever and talk to him. She imagined her McDreamy (the surgeon). He talks her through her fear and they successfully remove the bomb and as the chief bomb tech takes it and gingerly walks away out of the OR where they were she follows him outside the room to watch him walk away and...the unstable bomb blows up, killing the bomb tech and knocking the intern back, sending her flying and rendering her unconscious with various cuts and scrapes on her face.

As the surgeon ends up completing the surgery and comes up on the floor where everyone is waiting who had been evac’d from the OR area. He’s asking around "where is she?" and his wife comes running up to him and hugs him and tells him that she is glad that he’s alright. The chief of medicine’s wife looks at him and correctly deduces that "that is not the she that he was asking about". You can see the frustration in his eyes as he’s hugging his wife and it’s very heart rending b/c you know then, at that moment that he still loves the intern and he’s not quite sure what to do with that realization. Did I mention that Patrick Dempsey is a great actor?

The intern is lying in bed that night at the home she shares with some of the other interns with this nasty cut on her forehead (why is it always on the forehead?) and she is told that someone is at the door for her. She goes to see who it is and it’s her McDreamy and he’s just standing there looking at her and says "So...you almost died today." And she says "yeah" and there’s a little talk, but not much b/c you know that there’s so much there between the two that they want to say but can’t. So he turns to leave and she says "I can’t remember..." then he turns around and says "Can’t remember what?" She responds "I can’t remember our last kiss. I can’t remember the last time we were truly happy. I want to remember when we were happy but I just can’t." and you can see a touch of sadness in her eyes because of it.

He nods his head and moves once more to go out the door then stops. "It was a Thursday morning..." He turns back around to face her and then proceeds to go into the littlest detail down to the small hole in the neck on the back of the shirt she wore, what she was doing, that her hair smelled like a certain flower but he couldn’t remember what kind. You knew at that point that he had never forgotten anything between them, or even anything about her, and in fact had kept those moments tucked away in his memory. He said that he had been running late for surgery and that he would see her later and that she smiled and leaned over and kissed him – soft...a kiss that was one of those "habit" kisses, "like they’d (we’d) do that every day for the rest of their (our) lives" and then he walked out the door for surgery. "That was the last time we kissed". He looks at her and they share a silent "moment", if you will and you knew then that he never had stopped loving her, that he wondered still "what might have been". And it was then that she knew it too and something imperceptible changed between them at that moment. Not a gesture, not a word, but it was something that you could almost feel charging the air.

He turns to go again and she calls out "lavender". He faces her again and looks at her and she continues "my hair...smelled like lavender from my conditioner." He looks away, smiles kind of wistfully and says, almost to himself "lavender" and nods his head then looks up again at her and says "I’m glad you didn’t die today" and then leaves and the camera pans back and focuses on her standing there behind the glass of the front door watching him walk away. And the episode ended there.

So I wondered, does a love like that ever truly die or does it live on somewhere inside of the two people involved? Just like time can’t ever completely erase a deep hurt, can it ever completely erase a deep love? Is a deep love between two people like a spectral entity that haunts and remembers long after the two have parted ways, yearning to find it again? When or if it doesn’t, then is it doomed to haunt a person forever? From time to time I am haunted twice over and it makes me a bit maudlin and melancholy, a little depressed. I guess around this time of year it’s more than normal to feel that way.

I’m not a person who is cut out for the single life. I never have been. I enjoy relationships; I enjoy the cuddling, the kissing, the laughter and sharing. Believe me, it’s a lonely life being single and laying in a big bed by yourself when you’d rather have someone next to you, sharing your life. It’s been a lonely life for the past 2+ years of separation for me, even lonelier now that I’m truly getting divorced and have no way of knowing if I'll even find anyone worth bring around my daughter and it's a long, lonely road I see in front of me. I never thought it would come to this and it makes me sad because I still love my husband, regardless of the choices he made, but I can’t live with those choices and so I live alone with the precious daughter we created.

I guess that what I’m saying to those of you out there that if you have a deep love that stirs your very soul, don’t let it slip through your fingers. Don’t let doubts fanned from personal fears push it away. Don’t let wounded pride stop you from saying the words that you’re holding back. Fight for it, cherish it, nurture it, but above all, don’t ever give up on it because a true, abiding love is so hard to find, especially in these days of the marriages of half-commitments and quick divorces. If you are holding back those words that would let the other person know just how much they mean to you because of any hang-ups you have, any fears or any doubts, any stubborn pride – don’t. You just might be losing the love of your life and you won’t be able to get them back if you hold it back too long and let it go too far.