Remember Me

This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.

Remember Me

All Rights Reserved.

Copyright © 2012 Brian L. MacLearn

v2.0

Cover Photo © 2012 JupiterImages Corporation. All rights reserved - used with permission.

This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4327-9604-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012911295

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PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

I would like to personally thank my parents and Aunt Barbara
for their help and insights. All the characters in my story
are fictitious and a product of my imagination. Any resemblance
is purely coincidental and unintended.

Brian

Brian’s first novel “Our Heart” was published in 2010

Par t I

Time is strictly relative

To say that
today wasn’t much different from yesterday would be like making the statement; an ocean is just a big lake.

The greatest thinkers of all time would have difficulty pondering my predicament. I ceased to exist yesterday—well kind of. Yet here I am, living and breathing. Oh, and yesterday was May twenty-second, two thousand-ten, whereas today is May twenty-third, nineteen eighty-five. I have no reason to believe that I will wake up tomorrow and once again be a part of the life I once lived—my future life. I am not a scientist who discovered the ability to time travel, nor am I an actor shooting scenes of a major, or minor, motion picture. Who I am no longer matters, because there is no one around to recognize me.

That’s not entirely true. I am still me, only older.

I’ve been here for a little over twenty-four hours and I still have no clue as to why or how. I didn’t wish upon a star or make a pact with the devil. I will save that last thought though, because it is too early to tell what I may be willing to do to get back, if it’s even remotely possible. I didn’t pray to God either, to let me live my life again or happen upon a four-leaf clover with magical powers.

No leprechaun waiting at the end of a rainbow, no shooting star, no genie in a bottle, nothing to explain my current state. If any of those things had happened, I wouldn’t be a fifty year old man living in the world of nineteen eighty-five…for the second time. I would be young again with the ability to choose my own destiny. The yesterday of the future was by no means uneventful, it had been filled full of hope and love.

May twenty-third was going to be my fiftieth birthday. It was something I was looking forward to and not dreading at all. My wife planned to throw me a large party with all our friends and family present, and I was prepared to receive all the gag gifts which would surely accompany it. My children, from a previous marriage, were going to be there to help me celebrate. I would get the chance to see my granddaughter S 1 S

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for the first time in four months. In children-time it seemed like years, not months since I’d seen her. Megan changed dramatically every time I got to see her. It was a rite of passage as a grandparent, enjoying the growth of your grandkids and spoiling them any way you could. It was a day for happiness, not desperation. My caring and beautiful wife, Amy, woke me from a dreamless sleep on Saturday morning—the day before my birthday, so we could make love before her kids arose and we had to get ready for our guests.

It didn’t matter that we had made love the night before, she wanted to make sure I knew how much she loved me and how much fun she was having with my birthday coming up.

“You only turn Fifty once,” she’d said many times. As I cradled her head in the crock of my elbow, kissing her cheek, I moved slowly in rhythm with her body. She whispered in my ear, “I just want to make sure I get all the love I can, just in case…”

I laughed and bit her playfully on her ear lobe. She was five years younger than me and filled with more love and spirit than any man deserved—especially me. Devoted to her is not even close, enthralled, compelled, moved is still not quite right. She had both touched my heart and saved me. She might tell you it was the other way around, but I know the truth. She was my every breath and I needed her to live.

I had no reason to desire what had happened to me yesterday. My life was moving forward with happiness, not anguish.

There had been plenty of pain during the twenty-four years of marriage and divorce of my first wife, Tami, a role we both played to perfection. It was the same old story. Two high school sweethearts turned miserable adults, selfish and unbending.

When it ended I don’t think either one of us missed the other one, not to say that the pain of divorce in and of itself isn’t complicated enough. We had two children together, beautiful girls who found their independence and lives away from us.

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One managed to at least stay within driving distance, while the youngest followed a path that led her to the West coast.

I am not destined to be a hero, I avoid conflict whenever feasible. This is not my destiny; of that much I am certain, for if it was, then God picked the wrong man. I have not accomplished anything worthwhile or long-lasting in my life, outside of my children. I try to live by the golden rule: treat others as you want to be treated. This is a philosophy that renders one to mediocrity, but allows for a steadfast and peaceful coexistence with the world. I don’t want to be an inspiration to anyone other than my loving wife, her children and mine.

From where I stand now, I can no longer be their inspiration, father, husband or a lover. I cannot wrap Amy in a comforting embrace, whisper words of love and hope in her ear. I have no idea of what she is going through. I am just simply gone from her world, no explanation!

I remember looking in the mirror yesterday, while Amy

was in the shower, having kicked me out so she could finish up. Four years together and she still gets to me every time she gives me one of her smiles. I see compassion and understanding in her eyes. Her touch conveys the love and the need she has for me. I’ve tried unsuccessfully, to write about my love for her in poetry. She is more than my vocabulary and talents have ability to describe. She is complex in her simplicity. She is who she is and though she may not say a lot, she says it all when she kisses me.

The mirror collaborates what I’ve always felt. My waist is too wide, my legs long and skinny. My shoulders slump rather than being broad and dignified. If my torso had only been a couple of inches taller, I might have felt more in proportion. I carry more weight than I like, but then who doesn’t feel that way. On the positive side, I still have all of my hair, now mostly grey. When I was in my early thirties, I used to kid others my S 3 S

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hair was grey because of living with three women—a comment which would always draw a smirk or two from the men and a roll of the eyes from the women.

I was given the birth name Andrew Charles Johnson and

according to my mother, nothing magical happened at my

birth. Just the opposite, she would tell me. I listened to the story many times, of the long and painful labor she endured to get me here. There was nothing which pointed to the future I am living now, or better, reliving now. My eyes are blue, my nose slightly large, as are my ears. My hands are of average size and my sinuses bother me year round. In general, I believe I am healthy, outside of the normal aches and pains. I don’t exercise enough and I try not to overeat or over indulge in anything other than Thanksgiving dinner and Christmas cookies. I’ve never smoked and I am purely a social drinker. I went to college and did nothing remotely similar to my chosen degree. I chose a field based on what was popular at the time and not what was truly within me. I had one dream as a kid—to be a writer, but life isn’t about dreams, it still requires mortgage payments and grocery money.

I grew up in Cedar Falls, Iowa, a town large enough to

promise opportunities and small enough for one to be occasionally recognized. I graduated from the local college, the University of Northern Iowa with a degree in Human

Resources. I was prepping myself to be a personnel director, moving away from the Midwest, and becoming a big-wig in a Fortune Five Hundred company. Instead, I married Tami the summer after my freshman year. Bills needed to be paid and responsibilities took the place of dreams. I took a job at a local food distribution facility during college to pay the bills. I had to go an extra year to complete my degree. Between working full-time, school, and the new baby at home, life was har-ried. I wouldn’t have traded any of it—not the loss of sleep, S 4 S

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the worries over everything, money, tests, or even learning life’s lessons of being a father. Samantha was born in nineteen eighty-two and she made everything right in my life.

After graduation, there had been an opening in the sales department at Heartland Food Distributors. If I managed to snag the job, it would mean more money, better benefits. I’d already worked my way into “full-time,” status in the warehouse. I punched the clock every night from eleven to seven the next morning. It had been nothing short of a stay in hell the last year of college. Exhaustion ruled and fun seemed to only come in the form of time I spent with Samantha. It was wife, school-work, and baby…no life to try and make it together.

The work I was doing wasn’t what I’d planned on with my degree, but jobs were few and far between in my chosen field. I had no other choice, but to try for the open position. Living on two different schedules is not the way to keep a happy home.

It was the first time I would catch a glimpse of what our life might turn out like down the road. Somehow the excitement of more money, and for me—less quibbling over finances,

temporarily over-rode the internal problems I didn’t want to contemplate. Unfortunately, it also let them seed and develop much deeper roots later on.

I interviewed and was offered the job of a route sales person. My route was smaller and I would be compensated by

salary and commission. I would only have to have one overnight stay away from home each week. I had an established clientele of restaurants and the prompting to add others, while trying to expand the orders from my existing ones. For each new restaurant I added, I received a thousand dollar bonus.

This was after they had been on board three months and had placed product orders of at least five-thousand dollars during the same time period. I was happy and did well. I added twelve new restaurants in my first year, ten of which qualified for S 5 S

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the bonus. My other customers steadily increased their orders with me as well.

Three and a half years after Samantha was born, Emily followed. They were as different as night and day. There wasn’t any doubt they were the product of their mom and me. Our house was full of love, albeit, love for the children mostly and they were always our priority. Tami and I were already setting different courses, only we hadn’t recognized it yet. There was very little that we had in common, and as we grew as adults the rift became insurmountable. We always kept a game face on for the girls and it wouldn’t be until after the divorce that they would share what we always thought we’d hidden well—

Mom and Dad didn’t love, or even like each other much. It might have been different if we had found a way to maintain even a minimal physical connection to each other. We shared a bed, a house, the girls, family vacations, but our minds and spirits were already moving elsewhere.