Paul: a rising memory seen through ice cream....

Tonight I had microwaveable ice cream because at midnight, I could not wait for the self melt variety of old fashioned vanilla.  I ate in the dark by the space heater.  My mom would pour a narrow stream of chocolate flavoring over the ice cream when I was a child.  I had it that way tonight.  Tonight, memories pervade me like a long sought out dream.  Ghosts and closet relatives arise from their mantle and grave to take notice of me.  I met the "love of my life's" aunt at work today.  A closet relative whom I really did not know about.  Myrtle.  My ex boyfriend's mother's sister.  His mother died young in life, in her early sixties and she was not the best parent in his childhood.   His aunt, whom I came face to face with for the first time, seemed more responsible with years of hard work.  She is the evening cleaning staff at my new job.  She has a black, velcro brace for her left wrist, most likely carpel tunnel.  She is probably in her late sixties, possibly early seventies.  We briefly argued over the year Paul's mom died.  I thought she died a year after we broke up but it was 2001.  A few sketchy statistics led me to the path of discovering it was Paul she was talking about.   Married, in Calif, to an Italian.  So I somehow knew right away it was Paul, my ex.  Myrtle seemed to have a cutoff point in which she could no longer talked about Paul.  Apparently, she realized how important he was to me.  It was something I could not hide.  I wonder if tomorrow when I come to work, she would look at me differently me if she really knew I had been engaged to her beloved nephew.  She somehow took akin to him over all the other nieces and nephews she had.  (She had ten brothers/sisters).  It seems strange now how I met one of his relatives transfixed in time 15 years later, like a dark, undiscovered cloud or berry that had ripened.  The door to my heart reached through the back way and I rediscovered my lost love for him.  Paul, I know you settled in life when you used to be an extremist, a go getter.  You settled for the safe woman with the good job who was only semi attractive.  How is that working for you?