I'm no angel. If you must call me an angel don't call me a guardian angel. If you must call me an angel call me an observing angel. I watch. I don't interfere. I can't do anything that will affect the life of the one I watch. I can only watch. And hope.
Who do I watch? I watch my husband, though I guess "former husband" would be a better description as I am no longer in the same realm he is in. He has an unending drive to protect. It's what keeps him going. It's what keeps him awake at night, knowing that someone out there needs protection. I see his reactions to cases he gets. I can read his thoughts by looking at his face. When someone is not protected he must step in and protect them. I remember seeing his face when someone he loved, someone I loved, needed protection. He heard over the radio an address he knew, connected to a code that made his heart stop. That was not the only time he had to protect her. It has happened over and over again since I have started watching and it happened when I was with him. Of everyone, she was the one he was most protective of, more so even than of me. I think it was because of her past. I was never jealous of the other woman. In fact, I had always meant to tell my husband that if anything were ever to happen to me that I wanted him to begin a relationship with her. I never did tell him that. Sorry, I'm rambling. When you're where I am you fall into the habit of going where your thoughts take you.
Anyway, I remember watching when he could not protect her. It had already happened. All he could do was wait. He did not sleep for weeks, not until she came to him, tears in her eyes to tell him that she would be ok. I thought then that he would finally talk to her. Tell her how he felt. But he did not. I know how she feels. She loves him. She told me. She had been my husband's partner for about a year and we had gotten to be good friends when she came to me and said she needed to tell me something. She told me she loved my husband and that she wanted me to know because she did not want to ever do anything that would cause her to 'lose the only family she had". So she told me, hoping that I would believe her and never worry about her trying to steal my husband. I told her I was not worried, because, knowing my husband, he might have moments of weakness but that his conscience would not allow him to do anything to damaging while still married. That was when I decided that if anything were ever to happen to me, I wanted my husband to be with her. I'm doing it again. Sorry.
Anyway, I watched when her place was destroyed by fire and he invited her to take the spare room. I think her refusal was when he first started to realize how he felt. He went home, and sat on the spare bed, eventually falling into a fitful sleep. It was the first time since my leaving that he had not had something of mine near him when he slept. Even when he had been with that other woman he had, in the drawer she had given him, a shirt of his that I had often slept in. But in that spare room there was no connection to me. He had moved into a different apartment about three years after I left, getting rid of all my things except for that stupid ball. That ball was involved in our last fight. About a week before I left I had planned a day at the beach, intending for both of us to skip work. But he would not hear of it (there were people who would need protecting) and we started fighting. He went to work and later when he got home we made up. He did not go to work the next day. Nor did we go to the beach. I never got around to deflating the ball. You really must stop me when I go off topic like that. It's rude of me.
Other things have happened to her and each time I thought it would be when he finally did something. But he never has. Until now. And nothing tragic brought it about. In fact it was something happy that finally made him do what I have been hoping he'd do for some time. What made him do anything? He got news from one of the young ladies who works for him. I saw her go into his office with a young man. They spoke and he went to them and hugged them. He was happy for them. Later that night when he was wrapping things up he got a call. Smiling he left his office and went to meet his best friend for dinner. During dinner the conversation in his office came up and the look on her face as they spoke of family made him realize that she was waiting for him. She had been for some time now and the move was his. He made it, drawing her close before capturing her face for a kiss that told her she had family, and that she never needed to be lonely again.
I'm no angel. I just watch. And hope. But now I have no reason to watch and hope. What I have been hoping for has happened. I am content. I can move on. The two people who meant the most to me while I was with them are now together.