Anam Cara

Today is our sixth anniversary. Some time ago, I wandered into an AOL chat room and became a regular. Fellow chatters were also 'regs'. We all got to know each other and we were a little 'cyber-family'. We knew about each others families, friends, trials and tribulations. There was one chatter in particular that caught my attention. She was funny, caring, smart and so very cute. I partook in this chat room for many months and then, took a small break. When I came back to the room, the same folks were there, including the cutie you see in the picture above. That cutie being Maggie, not me. We spoke for hours online and then on the phone. I got by talking to her that she was a fabuloso individual. We talked and talked, exchanged email and snail mails...After 'knowing' me only a couple of months she sent me a great gift. It was a brutally cold December Rhode Island day ( all December days in Rhode Island are brutally cold) when I went to the mail box. I pulled the bills and folded inside the Warwick Beacon was a manilla envelope addressed to me with a New Jersey postmark. I ran back to the house, not wanting to freeze to the ground, tossed the mail on the dining room table and ripped open the envelope. Inside was a wool scarf. Not just any wool scarf, an IRISH wool scarf. Awesome! Perfect! My Dad, who was sick with cancer at the time, smiled and admired it. "That's a sharp lookin' scarf there kiddo," he said. "Mags sent it." "That was nice! She's somethin' eh?" I think he even referred to her as a 'nice girl'.

That was the beginning of the acts of kindness and thoughtfulness that have been bestowed upon me in the past 6 plus years.

Over the years our life together has been anything but boring. The death of my beloved Dad in 2000, open-heart surgery for Mags in 2004, the same exact procedure on her dad J.W. the following year, Maggie literally saving her mothers life by dragging her forcibly to the E.R. to be diagnosed just in time with E. Coli poisoning, the death of my dear friend Marc in 2005, the struggle to work full time and earn her N.J. State Real Estate licence, a bout with breast cancer for Mags in 2006, the death of my sister in 2007. Her Dad suffering from seizures and a near death experience in upstate N.Y.....man....We have been through it. Mags has been a huge support for me through all of my families tragedies and when the shit hits the fan there is one person who I want in my corner. I'm not sure what I would do without her.

Even though we've been living la vida loca there's nobody I'd rather be riding this Crazy-Train of life with.

So tonight, we'll go have a nice dinner somewhere and come home, maybe catch a movie and when I say goodnight, I'll consider Meself a lucky lad.