Funny how things turn out sometimes

At the beginning of May, I wrote about This Guy I’d been dating and whether he still liked me. He’d stopped calling me and I wondered why. I thought we were having fun getting to know each other. We weren’t exactly a match made in heaven but still, I was enjoying the time we spent together. It seems I’ve gotten less demanding about who I date as I’ve gotten older. I wouldn’t say I’ve lowered my standards but rather have become more open-minded about who I’ll jump into the dating pool with. If the guy is well-mannered, has a healthy sense of humor and is reasonably intelligent, that’s a good start. I have a lot more qualities I imagine I’d like in a mate but the above three should at least make for a pleasant dinner companion.

One area of incompatibility that seemed obvious between This Guy and me was health and fitness. While he worked extra hours on the business he has in addition to his day job, I was at the gym, on the tennis court or doing yoga. In fact, one night he joked about whether he could manage to walk a single lap around the track. I assumed he was kidding but now I’m not so sure. I figured like anyone who hasn’t reaped the benefits of regular exercise, he would feel better and have more energy if he worked fewer hours and had some kind of exercise routine. I wasn’t looking for a new workout partner so his sedentary lifestyle only bothered me in principle.

When we went to dinner, I was all about the salads and broiled chicken while he only likes his shrimp fried. With French fries. And extra ranch dressing on his salad. Ugh. So we would enjoy a nice seafood dinner at opposite ends of the spectrum — I’d be dining on boiled shrimp or a dozen raw oysters with some cole slaw on the side while he tried to put a dent in the fried seafood platter.

Last night I got some sad news about This Guy. He had a heart attack last week, and spent five days in the hospital. He left the hospital with three cardiovascular stents he hadn’t had when he went in. Next month he’s due to get three more. Yikes. He’s 56 — just six years older than me.

I hope he recovers speedily and lives a long and healthier life. But I keep wondering what I’d be doing right now if he hadn’t stopped calling me. If we’d continued dating, I suspect I’d be at his side now, helping him with his recovery. Which reminds me that everything happens for a reason — either to teach us a lesson we haven’t yet learned, eventually to bring us something we’ve been lacking or to take away something we shouldn’t have had in the first place.