The Story of Aimee and her three Lives

In earlier times alchemists were not only trying to extract gold but more, solve the riddle of mortality. Their quest for an everlasting life often occupied them during their whole life. We do not know if any of them succeeded. Though she never would have wanted to live forever! But luck was on her side. Not only had she one life as everyone else but three and saw it as a privilege. She felt she had achieved something. May be it had not been strictly in alchemistic terms, but she had managed her part in it by stretching time.

Let me call her Aimee, "the beloved one and tell you her story and how she did it.

Aimee, born exactly nine months after a blissful wedding night, was brought up in a religious household. Her father had died young; her mother, already a young war-widow nine month after the birth of her daughter, still lived with her parents and three sisters.
Both grandparents devoted their lives to their religious belief. Lutherans since generations, they had vowed to bring up their children dutifully and successfully like many generations before them.

Day life evolved around church and the Bible. It already started at breakfast when Grandpa entertained his crowd with Bible quizzes and religious riddles. Prayers were said before and thanksgiving after meals. On Sunday mornings they all took part in a church service where singing lots of hymns was thought of as "entertainment. In the afternoons they walked to prayer meetings. During their weekend outings on Saturdays, the whole family would rush enthusiastically and routinely to the woods to collect mushrooms and wild raspberries. They amused each other with biblical competitions like reciting the full names of the twelve disciples. It was not done in a preaching or stern way, as one could think, but in a relaxed and friendly manner. There was laughter and fun within the safe circle of togetherness.

Little Aimee excelled in all memory games. Her delighted grandpa paid her pennies for her many talents, a reward for the fifteen verses of a hymn she could sing without stopping, for being the quickest to come up with the twelve names of the disciples and the best in massaging his feet. That's what he adored most.

I am telling you this to give you an early picture of Aimee. An adored and quick-witted child she soon enough rebelled against Sundays' consuming church service, for she had to miss her beloved children's' hour on the radio. During the boring prayer meetings she invented a distracting game. With a naughty boy, who also had arrived to pray, the two youngsters competed in order to who could silently blow the biggest spit bubbles.
This passion for competitions, an unstoppable imagination and a good memory would prove essential for Aimee's later life.
She would need it in future to manage all those lies and to talk herself out of mischief.

She soon escaped her religious existence. With a mother who had no interest in her and without a father who could have given her good advice, she had married young. She went into marriage like somebody running along a corridor and stumbling around corners into the wrong room. Unsure even to her wedding day, whether she had done the right thing and neither head over heals in love, she had more or less fallen into the trap of self-delusion. An old lover had told her that to be in love was by no means essential to marry. Love was but in the mind, an abstract. One first had to consider all those practical reasons. If there was something like "love it would raise its head well after the wedding night and feelings would grow accordingly, the more time one spent together.
As her former lover had been an old and wise man, a member of the Royal Academy of Literature and Science and was well known in his own circle for his bon mots and wit, Aimee had listened carefully to him. Still for her, wisdom had more to do with pursuing the best ends by giving one's own best. To be wise meant also the art to know what to overlook. Therefore she went for a husband in a beeline. For practical reasons she decided he was the right one. She overlooked all the "insignificant things; for instance, that he had come from a broken marriage, his family were agnostics and that his depressive father had committed suicide..
To be fair, Aimee was attracted to her handsome man. He seemed to her a great person who was friendly and a pleasure to be with. She did not know his past then, but there were signs. Had she been more alert and street wise, she would have noticed them; then perhaps her life would have taken a different turn. Who will ever know?

She tried her best to be a good wife. Learnt from her grandparent, that a husband, head of the family, should be spoiled in every considerable way, she tried to be perfect: cook his meals in time, wash and iron his shirts quickly and without fuss. The moment he came home from work, everything was to be spick and span: the house vacuum-cleaned from top to bottom, all rooms dusted and tidied, and the table like a still-life, beautifully laid with a hot and steaming meal. He only had to take his coat off, wash his hands and sit down to eat.
When children came along, it included them too: At her husband's arrival they were to receive him bathed, dressed in their pyjamas and happy. Not always easy, one would guess.
For many years Aimee put all her efforts into pleasing her husband, who never so much as acknowledged it. He had worked hard in his bookshop all day long and thought it was part of the bargain. A taciturn and introvert man, he probably was pleased but saw it as unnecessary to praise her.
Over the time Aimee fell into a lingering sadness. This life was not what she had wanted: to clean a house in a never-ending circle, to look after four children all day long without the pleasure of adult talk. She hardly had friends and could not drive a car. She felt isolated and depressed with a frustration that was gnawing at her; even her nice home and garden would not compensate for it. Not only took it over her life but also her whole person and made her feel worthless.

Luck was on her side and she was still unaware. Fate would soon deal her a better hand. Aimee had met H a teacher whose help she had sought for her daughter's school problems. He was easy to talk to and after the weekly lessons coffee breaks lasted longer and longer. They chattered about anything and nothing, joked with each other and were sliding quite accidentally into a certain familiarity that probably was unusual for a married woman within the circle of her family. H showed himself charming and gentle in his attention to her, but a bully in respect to her hard working husband, whose feelings meant nothing to him. Intrigued by Aimee he tried in all possible ways to woo her. He must have noticed how deeply unhappy she was. He took advantage of the situation. I think, she probably quite early on talked to him about her physical isolation and lack of friends. Did he feel pity for her in the very beginning or was it love at first sight? Only H would know the answer.

One day H turned up with a large bunch of red roses that he carelessly threw at Aimee.
A present for you.
"But it is not her birthday, her husband stated with an air of incredulity. Could someone really be so utterly tactless giving roses to his wife just under his nose? He did not know it yet, but this was H's speciality. He never went about in circles but straight to the point. Like a fly in a spider web, the victim sees it coming but is unable to move from a kind of mental terror and disbelief. Aimee's husband, never good with words, was speechless in the face of such behaviour. On hindsight, this had been a grave mistake, as we will see in the future of events.
H showed his passion for Aimee in a hundred little ways. There was no day he appeared without a present. He started to write her poems, gave her a key ring that whistled, when it was mislaid and was never short of ideas, always finding new ways of keeping her interested and amused. Most important for her was his attention for all those things she had never been able to talk about: the pain of seeing her young daughter disabled, difficulties in her children's education as well as her unhappiness about the sad state of her marriage. A patient listener, he was simply there for her and she grabbed him. The fact that he took over and made her life his own was not yet clear for her. Much later she managed to understand it.
H had been getting over the death of his sixteen-year-old daughter, the apple of his eye and the only girl among her two brothers. One day Jessica had suffered from stomach ache and was rushed to hospital. When doctors could not find a reason for her sudden illness, they sent her home with a couple of pills. Her health deteriorated and within hours she was back in the emergency ward.
She died the same night from an inflamed pancreas. Her father went out of his mind. He cradled her during her last moments while he watched her young life slipping away. His distress left him unable to concentrate and work for some time. He was still in mourning when he met Aimee. Witnessing her ordeal with her handicapped daughter triggered his feelings of loss and anguish. He was able to sympathise and truly understand her.
Over the coming years he supported her in her daily life, took part in every day's necessities, shopping for food or helping to take her daughter to hospital appointments. If he could make time, he was at hand, if needed he fetched her children from school. He ran errands for her. He collected her husband's prescriptions from the pharmacist even insisted to pay for them. Aimee became dependent on her "Knight in shining armour as she called him, who helped her, before she even had to ask. It was as if he could read her thoughts offering his time and money. She completely relied upon him and his constant presence in her life.
Their union however was not one-sided. Both took a great interest in each other's lives. She listened to anything he told her about his family, his marriage and his children. Not only facts were discussed at length but also feelings, the reason for them and how the outcome of certain actions would influence the future. Their minds were interacting, flowing constantly from one to the other, something he had never experienced before. He thought of Aimee as the only person who saw the true himself without the mask that he normally presented to the people around him.
This was the time Aimee started her second life, in a way detached from her other one, but yet entwined. It grew into a different dimension, involved a host of other people, some she never had met but had become familiar with their intimate details. If his sons had achieved something, perhaps changed their jobs, wrote a newspaper article or received an award of some kind, she felt excited and pleased. She shared his grief if something had gone wrong in his household. She even, in her mind, took sides with his wife against him, when she felt he had treated her unfairly. She knew the layout of his house, the spread of his garden, his untidy garage blocked up with his sons' motorcycles and spare car parts, where he worked weekends at his workbench to shape his woodwork. She had made friends with his elderly father who lived alone and had developed a friendly relationship with him. She left love poems at his wedding anniversary on the grave of his wife to cheer him up and visited him in hospital after an operation. When she did a course in psychology at a college, she used this old man's life in her case study. Everything around H belonged somehow to her too. For of how well she was received in H's family, one has to remember the time one Christmas, when she was invited by H's sister and brothers for a lovely meal. She did not expect H's wife or sons to attend, for they kept a distance to his part of the family. Aimee's life with H had been acknowledged and approved by many of his inner circle. Once Aimee also gave a dinner party in her own home for H's sister and partner when her husband was absent. H was acting as the man of the house, laying the fire and uncorking the wine bottle. It felt completely natural. Had he not also painted some of the walls a week before and mended the plaster ceiling of another room?

In this way these two people loved each other for more than twenty years. They both led two lives, one open, the other one hidden. People and events though were slipping in and out interacting with those lives and made them even more exciting.
To be able to live her intricately woven existence, Aimee had to lie. She resolved this by telling half-truths or nothing at all, so that her guilt would not overpower her. She was lucky that her husband never asked where she had been or where she was going. She often wondered about his reasons. Did he not want to know or did he not want her to feel guilty? If it meant the latter, he would have been a saint and she a terrible sinner. She did not see herself doing anything wrong. She rather felt the victim of circumstances trying to survive as best as she could.
Her husband lived his life encapsulated in his own self-made silence. They talked, even smiled at each other, but there were few words and a palpable feeling of loss between them. Most of the days he took medication against the depression that seemed to have been a family affliction. His father had suffered it as well as his brother, who had left for early retirement due to his illness.
Aimee cared a great deal for her husband. She could see all the anguish he was carrying around in his painfully thin body. He suffered from skin rashes and was continually scratching his scalp. Minor unpleasant behaviours affected her emotions in a way that resembled how physical allergens work. The first experience would be likely to produce a small negative reaction, but repeated contact increase sensitivity. His lack of appetite, the way he was sitting at the table with his arms tightly held near his body, his hands tapping nervously or curled into fists made her "allergic to him. She often felt at snapping point, already starting at breakfast, but she swallowed her words not to upset him. His whole body language was crying out to her and made her feel sorry for him but also guilty. Was she causing his stress? She would have liked to help him. But whenever she tried calling his dark and twisted heart, there never would be an echo.
Over the years H was changing. His waist had widened, his paunch doubled. He had trouble walking and was suffering constant backache due to a knife stabbing accident with one of his bad pupils. As a special needs teacher he was in charge of the most deprived children, tearaways from society, who were aggressive and dangerous. He could not walk for long anymore. He also seemed to have less time for Aimee due to his working hours and nearly unnoticed, she felt a growing distance that filled her with dread.
Was she going to lose him? There was sadness and loneliness in her heart and she feared missing the companionship they had built up over many years. More and more her thoughts wandered. One of her daughters was very successful in the Internet dating game. One day, in a light moment, Aimee wondered, should she just try to find someone who would walk with her and perhaps go swimming with? She had asked H in the past but he always had refused, probably due to embarrassment about his enormous bulk.
Her daughter, who saw how lonely she was, persuaded her: "Just try it! I'll write your introduction. She came up with a short descriptive piece about her mother, a keen gardener, who liked a man being an outdoor type and
not mind getting his hands dirty. Out there was a man who read this quite by chance twenty minutes after she had posted it. How he had laughed! "Likes a man getting his hands dirty!
Aimee later thought that this must have triggered the speed of his response. Somehow, as if drawn by an invisible thread, they started their Internet conversations carefully, with days of silence between them. Aimee hit on the idea of writing a story together. Where one of them stopped, the other one would pick up the loose end and continue. For months they meandered on their way of getting to know each other. They were constantly evaluating little things, given signals that they tried to interpret. They played hide and seek with each other to protect their vulnerability.

They both were married. S just had gone into retirement. The thought of being at home full time with a depressive wife was not what he had in mind. She also upset him with her phobia of touch or nakedness, be it in art or real life. Sex was out of the question. They had managed to produce their first child, but given up soon after, opting instead for adoption. He always had needed physical touch, warmth and laughter around his sparkling personality. Winning over people easily with his sense of humour, he relentlessly teased those he loved. His charming ways made him popular at work and also in his church community, where he and his wife were both active. Life kept him busy with the visits of his three sons and family. He often met his good friend the Rector discussing the perpetual problems of funding all the various aspects of church activities. He would never refuse help to the many people who constantly called for his advice. Still he felt something missing that occupied his thoughts and he hoped to find it in the anonymity of cyberspace.
S looked for a relationship with a woman who would offer him companionship as well as the touch he craved for. He had had several affairs in his life, but they all came to nothing in the end. Some petered out; one of his woman friends went back to her husband. He thought of giving it all up. The Internet was a last chance. He had tried it before, meeting an American woman on a blind date. When he saw her for the first time, she was late and confessed her love for her boss. Still he wanted to find out more and agreed to her invitation. When he arrived at her flat, he found her sitting with her feet in a bucket of hot water. She told him, he had come just in time, as she needed someone to paint the skirting board. She obviously believed in cheap labour. He didn't.
His relationship with Aimee grew steadily, parallel to the development of their mutual story. They had started to call each other on the phone and were intrigued by each other's voices. It is something mystical about a voice without a body that makes itself a home in one's ear. Certain sounds, the up and down of tones, a slight mannerism in an accent can attract or repel. Aimee loved his voice. She felt sucked up into its velvety sound and couldn't get enough of it.
That was the start of her third life.
More and more they sought one another, just for listening. They made a commitment of honesty. They were used to shy away from a harmful truth and go for a useful lie, the easy way out. But they knew all about the destructiveness of lies. It is not the lie that goes through the mind, but the one that sinks in and settles, that causes so much heartache.
At this new start they just wanted it right. Both were adamant not to lie to each other. Being honest was an essential trait of their characters and had been lacking in their lives for a long time.
S promised Aimee to take her away, show her the country she lived in and hardly knew except for the area around her home. His keen interest in historic sites made him an excellent guide. But for their first trip they left England for France. Paris, City of love and lovers-to-be, wrapped them with its timeless magic. For a week they had time to get to know each other. They were strolling arm in arm along the big avenues wanting each moment to last. They explored galleries, visited museums, and relaxed over coffee and croissants in small local bars near the Seine. Whenever S made promises, he kept them. When they made love, they both meant it.
Escaping from their own lives they met on several secret holidays to Dorset, Devon and the New Forest. They even managed a weekend visit to the opera house in Covent Garden, a treat Aimee had until then only dreamt about.
A travel to Andalusia drew them even closer. They explored together the arid mountainous landscape where they got lost in dense cloud. They walked the high and wild limestone plateau of the Torcal, a nature reserve scattered with rock pinnacles and towers like aliens with a myriad horizontal breaks that split their stony faces. There was the unstoppable voice of the wind. They listened to its message of timelessness that made them feel detached from it all and also truly alive.
Whenever they were together, everything fell into place. The feeling that they had known each other for a long time was omnipresent. They were like ancient souls who had met again after a dormant period, may be centuries. Aimee had always believed in reincarnation. Not only the Greeks and Egyptians taught it, but also the early Christians, like Saint Gregory, who was certain about being reborn in order to heal and purify one's past soul. Aimee was inclined to see themselves as two who had come back for new experiences. How else would there be this immediate understanding between them, often without words? Life on earth is meant as a constant test for souls to prove themselves. Like fish in water who do not know about skies, like birds in the air, who do not know about the Universe, we in this world would not know about the ultimate truth. But there were glimpses of it everywhere.
Wherever and as soon as these two people met, a spark ignited. They called it happiness, for there was no better word for it.
As shadow turns to light and back into shadow, there also befell dark days. S had felt unwell for some weeks and was diagnosed with a serious illness that weakened his body and troubled his mind. There was medication for it though, and he hoped he could beat it over the time. He was determined to get better for the woman he loved.
Aimee lived fully now in her third life. It meant not only an accumulation of her dreams and wishes, but also achieving a final goal. She wanted it to take over the other two lives and become the one she had always longed for. There were so many obstacles, her husband, H, S's illness and the thread of time running out. Yet it arched like a rainbow at the edge of the horizon, always in front of her. As long as the sun was piercing the rain clouds, it gave her hope.

Aimee's three lives which she so carefully protected and nursed, ran parallel yet interspersed. She developed an art to slip into each one quite naturally without pangs of guilt. She did not like herself for it, but felt rather good for having a conscience that made her feel better again. True guilt was for her something she owed to herself, false guilt not owing up to the expectations of others.

It was amazing how she saw each of her lives as a symbol and in colour. Her home life within her family appeared to her in a dream in the shape of a blue heart slightly frayed at the edges. She was not too surprised about the "frayed but wondered about the "blue. Would it mean sad? She always had a difficult relationship with the colour blue, something she never could explain easily. She liked blue in small quantities, lacy flowers like forget-me-nots or as sparse dots of colour in a landscape, yet not so much on large surfaces. A vast deep blue sky overwhelmed and overawed her. May be the colour blue was significant for her relationship with her husband, who knew about her other lives. He had been friendly with H a long time ago and also had met S for talks about the future. Yet he understood very little about their importance for his wife's life. Her secrecy, although he never asked her any questions, depressed him. This gave her the impression he never wanted to know.

The colour she saw when she thought of her life with H was "golden, a rolling cornfield dotted with luscious red poppies, the sign of a never-ending harvest that filled her with gratitude. It also conveyed an unwavering assurance, that the seasons would go on in a constant circle, never to stop.
On one hand, she could not imagine ever losing H, as he had been part of her life for so long; on the other was she prepared for his loss. Time would be running out one day and probably soon, due to his declining health. He had suffered a stroke and now walked like a drunkard with a stick, stumbling over his own legs. He often fell hurting his big bulk. All this bruising added to a vicious circle of pain. She used her time to see him as often as possible. They went to the cinema, play readings and music events. They enjoyed drinks in pubs, where they played cards and dominoes, talked to people and made new friends. H had been told about S, but he just did not want to know. He simply thought him away.

S always had known all about H, their past, and their outings together. Sometimes they even spotted each other from afar but did not approach. Surprisingly, S felt happy for her to be with H. He loved to know that Aimee was having a good time. He just wanted her safe and content, when he could not be with her, and understood that H would never come between their feelings for each other.
There was no winter in their relationship, only autumn, where one reaped more and more delicious fruit. Aimee saw her third life as an apple tree laden with fruit and always green, but often battered by strong winds and rain. Yet each time a storm had receded and the rain ceased, it would hold up its branches again generously offering its fruits of joy.

There was pleasure in her many lives but also sorrow. Her feelings rooted treelike in the fertile ground of her insight but were constantly battered by winds of change that pulled at her heartstrings. She tried holding on to her lives. She was pretty sure about her capacity to give love. What she always had wanted though was to beat sadness.