Keith Patton
I apologize for not reading this myself, but I know I wouldn’t be able to get through the first sentence without breaking down.
To tell you how Kim and I began our lives together, I have to tell you a little story.
Ours is a story of fate. It seems we were destined to be together. The old saying about when fate closes a door it opens a window is true. Kim and I climbed through a lot of windows together.
I met Kim twenty-nine years ago. I was forty-one, and she was thirty-nine and we were both in relationships. We both moonlighted part time for the same employer, got to be friends and then parted ways, but fate had other ideas.
We kept running into each other, here and there, but the time that changed my life, was at Katy Mills Mall. Our relationships had ended; those doors had closed. I saw her at the mall as I waited in the Walden Book checkout line. She was in an adjacent store and even from afar I was smitten. I didn’t recognize the distant beauty as my future Kimmie. I only knew I had to see her up close.
I grabbed my bag and headed for the door and there she was. Mutual recognition took place at the same instant and before I could move she jumped up, arms around my neck and her legs around my waist and kissed me. At least that’s the way I remember it. She said two words that changed my life forever…”Call me.”
I did that evening, and I remember my hand shaking as I did. Could I be so lucky? It was another open window through which I gladly climbed.
I learned that she now lived within walking distance of my house. Fate again?
We began to date, then fate closed that door. I was being transferred to Austin.
We were both disappointed, but she came over and helped me finish siding my garage prior to renting it out. She was like that, ever giving. I knew she was a keeper when she could do the measurements and yell them over the roof so I could cut the stuff in the driveway. It was only later that I learned she had learned to hang drywall from her father.
The door had closed, but I came back to see her frequently and on a weekend visit a window opened.
Kimberlee lost her job. So I grabbed her and we climbed through that window. I asked her to move to Austin and live with me. “Make a fresh start, move and find a job up there, you won’t be far from Houston, lets see how things go. No strings.” I said. If it didn’t I promised to move her back to Katy. She accepted.
Our stay in Austin was two years of bliss, like an extended honeymoon. We were on the road every weekend, exploring the Hill Country and beyond. Then I was transferred back to Houston. We lived in Westchase and in two years I was laid off. Another door, so we moved back into my house in Katy, another window. Kim immediately made it hers. From the flowerbeds to the interior, she was a dynamo putting her stamp on every inch of the place.
That was 2004 a mere twenty-two years ago.
When she finally got the final diagnosis, her oncologist cried. He said she was the most remarkable woman he’d ever met. He said there had never been a time when she hadn’t had a smile on her face even when the news wasn’t good and she never shed a tear. The man, a germaphobe broke his protocol when he saw how badly I was taking it, and gave me a hug. That final door has closed. I only hope Kim will be waiting at the next open window.
Kim and I had a rich, full and happy life together but it was cut way to short. I told her and was convinced that she would outlive me, but she said she didn’t want to. She had already buried her first husband Jim, and didn’t want to bury another. But believe me, I would have traded places with our beloved Kimmie in a heartbeat if I could have.
She was the love of my life and has left a void in me that I will never be able to fill, and don’t want to. Kimberlee was one of a kind, my princess, my angel, my forever love. I am inconsolable but for the knowledge that she is no longer in pain and at peace.
Goodbye Kimb