Can't Stop the Rain from Falling...

But I was never told about the sorrow
How can you mend a broken heart?
How can you stop the rain from falling down?
How can you stop the sun from shining?

What makes the world go round?
How can you mend this broken man?
How can a loser ever win?
Please help me mend my broken heart

And let me live again

---Bee Gees, How Can You Mend A Broken Heart, 1971...

"It's over," she said to me, outside a Boca Raton lounge, where I had driven to see her perform that night. "I'm sorry but I can't do this anymore. I want to break up." I was aghast. I didn't know what to say. What do you say when someone tells you they no longer want to be with you? What is there to say?

I felt like the American businessman who hires the "Just OK" Dutch translator in the AT&T commercial, who says, "Tell him we need this merger." And the translator says to the Dutch businessmen, "This man is very bendy... He says he needs a hug." I could've used a hug. But, I never got it.

Instead, she turned around and went back inside, leaving me standing in the rain (no it wasn't really raining but it should have been), thinking to myself, what just happened?

First of all, every time I hear the line, "I can't do this anymore," from someone breaking up in a movie or TV show, I think of the Egyptian slaves dragging ginormous blocks of cement in the sand in the intense heat of the Egyptian desert (I mean hot; Africa hot, as Matthew Broderick says in Biloxi Blues. Tarzan couldn't take this kind of hot!); day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. Now, those guys, they had the right to say, "I can't do this anymore." Anything less, is an overstatement.

In any case, I thought the relationship was going great. As often happens, the one who is broken up with usually gets hit with a two by four unexpectedly. We're always the last to know; until we find ourselves on the floor, bleeding profusely with half our brains in our hands and our hearts gripped in unbearable pain.

We had been together for about a year and a half. We had endured a semester of her going away to college, about five hours away, which I knew intimately, since I would drive them a couple of times a month. And, we were happy; at least, I thought we were happy until that ill-fated night outside the lounge.

The rest of the night was a blur. I'm not sure whether I went back inside or stayed outside. I just remember her leaving in a car I didn't recognize without even looking my way.

What a horrible drive home it was. It was about an hour and a half away from home and all I could do was cry and try to figure out what happened. What did I do? What could I have done? Was there any hope? What could I still do?

I'm sure there was plenty of guilt and repentance for things I had done or failed to do. It's never a one-way street when things fall apart. But, at that point in our lives, I was about 20 and she 19, things kind of happen in the natural course of life; there are too many ambitions, ego, pride, places to go and people to meet.

I was just transferring from junior college to the University of Miami and that first semester was all but lost to me. I really took the moniker for the U, "Suntan U," to heart. I skipped class and went to the beach to lay out in the sun every single day of that first semester. By the end of the term, I was not only looking like George Hamilton, but I had to drop every class but one; a television production class that I had with UM quarterback Steve Walsh and tight end Dennis Kelleher, who later married one of my wife's best friends. It was either drop the classes or fail them. I chose wisely, to my parents' chagrin. It's a good thing that school wasn't as expensive as it is today plus I had scholarships, grants and student loans to rely on.

You never really get over your first heart break. Oh sure, you eventually get over it. You move on, as a widow who loses her husband or a dog owner who loses their pet, or leaves it with family to take care of while they're on vacation only to get back and find out the dog ran away (True story. My family lost a relative's dog that way!)

But, in the process, as harrowing as it may feel at the time, you grow strong. You learn a lot about yourself and about relationships. Then, eventually, you fall in love again, and maybe even several times (as in my case) or you get a new dog. But, you never really forget. And the pain leaves a permanent scar in your heart.

It's a rite of passage. You never really grow up until you get your heart broken, sometimes more than once.

Last week, my daughter suffered her first heart break and watching her go through it made me reminisce of what it was like.

As a father, there's a sense of helplessness because there is nothing we can really say or do. We know they will get through it but, in the midst of their grief, it's difficult to make them understand.

Nothing I can do will make the rain stop falling, as the Bee Gees sang, or keep the sun from shining. It just takes time. Time and lots of tears. Eventually, the clouds go away, the sun peaks through and then the moon. Ultimately, the tears subside.

Time and God, or should I say, God in time heals all wounds. The pain goes away. The heart mends, the loser wins and you learn to live again...

Can't Stop the Rain from Falling...

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