David McElroy

I don’t know what I expected to find by coming here tonight.

For days now, I’ve been haunted by an unexpected image from the past — a moment, a night, an argument, a year — and I’ve come looking for it. I really don’t know why.

This was the place, but it was a time long ago. I’m on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham. We sat in my old red Volkswagen in this parking lot and talked about our relationship — our past and whether we had a future.

She was my first serious girlfriend. We dated for three years while we were in college, mostly in Tuscaloosa when we were both students at the University of Alabama. The first year and a half were very happy. We got engaged and happily planned a future together, but something happened.

I realized she wasn’t the right woman for me and this made her very confused. I don’t blame her, because I didn’t make much sense. As I pulled away from her, she tried harder and harder to pull me closer.

By the time we sat in my car that night, we were both miserable.

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When I first started picking up bits and pieces of their conversation, I thought the elderly man and woman were talking about Christmas parties.

“Martha’s is at 4 but it’s in Cullman,” the woman said. “That wouldn’t give us much time to get back for John’s at 6.”

“I know,” her husband said. “We’ll just have to leave early at Martha’s and maybe be a little late for John. Neither one of them will hold it against us.”

Then I realized they weren’t talking about social plans. They were talking about funerals.

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“You’ve certainly been happy,” the woman said. “I can always count on you to cheer me up. You seem like you haven’t got a care in the world.”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. I was in the middle of a conversation with someone who I see a couple of times a week. She’s bright and mature enough — at least 50 years old — to have experienced a lot of life. She’s no dummy. As a restaurant owner, she deals with people constantly — and she knows me pretty well from our frequent conversations.

We had been talking about how it’s easy to tell how unhappy some people are. She chose me as the counter-example to make her point. She said I always seem especially happy.

“What makes you think you know me?!” I wanted to scream.

It was an oddly alienating moment for me Friday night when this happened. Instead of lashing out, I just asked why she thought what she did. Then I briefly told her I’m actually quite miserable lately.

She thought I was kidding, so I dropped it.

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