My father rode his bicycle to work almost every day, even though he didn't have to. He took a bike path along the Amazon Slough in Eugene Oregon. Every day he got up early and packed a lunch with pieces of bread, small plastic containers of jam, peanut butter, fruits, nuts, raisins, and leftovers from my mother's cooking. On November 2, 2004 he was riding his bicycle to work and the path went under a small bridge next to the water. He still had his hands on the handlebars when they found him. He had Marfan syndrome, a genetic connective tissue disorder. It can affect the aortic tissue, and can cause a spontaneous aortic dissection which is fatal in four out of five victims, usually quickly, as in the case of my father.

My father bore a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, with his long, slightly crooked nose, lanky features, and occasional beard. Lincoln's life was cut short at 56 from a gunshot wound. It is speculated that Lincoln had Marfan syndrome as well. I am the same height as my father but I'm not as lanky, rather an average build.

We were attending a church at the time that was very small and new with a serious lack of leadership or direction. The church disbanded a couple years later much to the relief of most involved. I haven't attended church regularly since, and have no plans to do so now. My marriage though young at the time was also in decline. That ended at the end of 2007, nearly four years after it started. Many of my family and friends were upset that I was abandoning the marriage. Fewer were upset that I had been emotionally abandoned and put up with it for such a long time. I lost some friends, and moved to Portland almost immediately. It was a hard time. I had suffered a lot of loss. Loss of my father, church, wife, and friends. I still had a lot of friends and my family did not abandon me, but I was hurt by a lot of people who felt it was more important to tell me that I was wrong than to listen to me. I got fed up with explaining myself to person after person--close friends who were sometimes less than sympathetic, so I wrote an email and blasted it to every email address in my contact list. It was a hurtful email, and I regretted it. I withdrew from a lot of people.

In Portland, I met up with a former girlfriend, Megan. I had been in love with her at one point before I had even met my first wife, (she had left to volunteer at an orphanage in Mexico). Unbelievably, she was single. I couldn't find a programming job right away and I ended up working in a coffee shop for a few months, living in a basement apartment with my new/old girlfriend. I didn't tell anyone that I was living with her. Most of my friends and family are evangelical Christians. Having been in that place myself, I understand the feelings and the guilt and the need to uphold the old moral rules. When in that place, seeing a close friend commit carnal sins is difficult. It makes you angry as though the person has sinned against you personally. I understood the feelings, but I was hurt nonetheless.

Megan was amazing to me (she still is, by the way). She didn't judge me, didn't throw scriptures in my face. She just loved and accepted me. You see, she had also left the church, and had dealt with moral indignation and anger and misunderstanding from friends. At the time I moved in with her, I was smoking most of a pack of cigarettes a day. After several months, she encouraged me to try to quit. It wasn't easy, I failed at first, but eventually succeeded. I only succeeded in quitting because she held me to it. I remember one rainy night, I had recently quit, but had bought a pack, and smoked a cigarette. I had another cigarette in my hand, having thrown away the rest of the pack. I was crying. I wanted that last cigarette and she told me that it wasn't OK. It was no longer going to be OK with her for me to smoke. I smoked it, and it was the bitterest cigarette I'd ever tasted. That was nearly a year ago. I've had no more than a handful of cigarettes since then, total. I breathe a lot freer now than I did before when I was smoking. Chances are, I'll live a lot longer.

We are married now--not that it matters when you are in love. My life has settled down dramatically. I've had the same programming job for nearly a year and I ride a bicycle to work every day. My wife packs me a lunch and leaves it hanging from the handle inside the front door of our apartment so I don't forget to take it when I leave in the morning. In the evening we eat together. Sometimes we have misunderstandings that take a lot of talking to work through, but we always do, and most nights our improbable love leaves us sweaty and breathless on the bed, covers in a heap on the floor, the rest of the world too far away to matter.