So I googled him, and for the first time in all these years, something came up for James G. Malone... his obituary. Wow. Whoa. Wow. He was only 56 when he died December 1, 2008 - only 3 months ago.

I sat there at the hotel room work desk - staring at my computer in disbelief, reading the obit over and over to make sure it was real. It was. There was no mention of the cause of death, tho, and the obituary was fairly brief - or at least it seemed so to me for some reason.

Quite honestly, I'm still processing all of this. It's been 12 years since I was with James, so it's not like he was "in my life" anymore for quite some time now. However, it's a very strange mix of emotions going on here, and I'm quite frankly not sure what to make of them. The only thing that's clear is that I feel a bit weird and sad. Tho ours was a rather tumultuous relationship of just over 2.5 years, it goes down as one of the most significant relationships of my life, and James was definitely one of the very few great loves of my life.

James was a good man who struggled with depression and bipolar disorder for most of his adult life, as far as I know. When he was up, he was incredibly charismatic, charming, witty and fun. Sadly, when he was down, it was as though the world were crushing him like an ant. As time went on, the mood swings became more frequent and abrupt. At the time, I didn't really understand that much about the whole bipolar and/or depression thing - I had had some experience with men previously that had "issues" of a psychological nature, but didn't really know that much about manic depression other than what I had read about in books or seen in movies, et. al., which wasn't that much. With James, I took it upon myself to learn more, but even a better understanding of the pathologies didn't really help when it came to his depressions. I always ended up taking it personally and would be hurt by his words and/or actions during those periods. My own M.O. was to flee, which I did about nine times in total over that two and a half years. 

So - yes, tumultuous. But memorable. Very memorable.

James was a very talented man in many ways. He was very intelligent, had an excellent and extensive vocabulary, was a very good writer, was a latent self-taught computer geek, had a lovely speaking voice, was very witty and able to charm the socks off most anyone if he wanted to. He loved motorcycles and got me a Honda Shadow 700 so that we could ride together, yet independently. There were some very good times with James, and those are the memories I will cherish. The not-so-good times are part of the memory bank, as well, but as time marches on, their significance continues to fade to black.

Rest in peace, James. Thanks for the memories. Maybe we'll hook up again next time around.