David McElroy

I used to take a lot of sunset pictures, but I haven’t felt much like it this year. I wanted to test something about my camera, though, so I went to a hill near where I live Thursday evening to wait for sunset.

My iPhone’s weather app told me that sunset would be at 7:41 p.m. I was in place three minutes early, with my iPhone and my Canon T3i. There were clouds, but the light didn’t look promising. Except for a few spotty pink streaks, the sky was gray.

I know from experience that the color can suddenly appear up to about 10 minutes after sunset, so I waited. But nothing happened. The sky continued to look gray with a few very minor streaks of color from time to time. When the clock got to 7:55 and there was still nothing worth photographing, I was disappointed.

I decided to quit waiting. I got into the car and started driving down the hill where I’d been waiting.

When I had driven almost completely down the hill, I suddenly looked up and saw an amazing pastel image of flaming shades of orange and pink mixed with gray and black. It was perfect, but I was now out of position.

I quickly turned the car around and got to a decent vantage point. It wasn’t quite as good a spot as where I’d been to start with, but it would still work. I jumped out of the car and had time to shoot about four frames — right before the vibrant rays of colorful light faded away just as quickly as they had appeared.

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I was getting married seven years ago today, but I backed out.

I’ve written before about the choice I faced at the time when two women wanted to marry me. I was torn about what to do, because any decision I made was going to hurt someone badly. I ended up making the worst possible decision. I lost both of the women — and hurt all three of us.

As I get to the date that would have been my seventh wedding anniversary, I find myself thinking about that decision again. And I wonder what good it does me to know what I should have done — since I have no way of going back to 2008 to share my current knowledge and wisdom with my younger self.

The memories of the weekend during when I decided whether to go through with the planned wedding will always be strongly burned into my mind. I was spending the weekend alone in order to make the decision. The woman who I intended to marry was waiting for my decision, as was the other woman, who desperately hoped I would choose her instead.

From the place where I sit today, it’s an easy decision. I could lay out the facts for almost anyone and it would seem clear. But I was so wrapped up at the time in fear that was born of deeply rooted emotional dysfunction that I couldn’t see that.

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