Stardust


Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights dreaming of a song
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you

I was born in 1929, when the stock market crashed along with the rest of the world. People were dying for their welfare when I took my first steps and learned how to read.
But still I grew up happily, untouched by the Depression. My parents couldn’t have any brothers or sisters for me so I was always alone or with my parents, looking for things to do. At ten years old, the best part of my day was walking to the local shops with my mother to buy food for dinner. My mother knew everybody; the baker, the florist, the butcher, etc. and I just wanted to be in her shoes.
But enough about me. This story isn’t even about me.
It’s about him.
Dick Strubbe worked in the butcher shop and he was perfect, even at 14 years old. I didn’t think much of him other than the fact that he was the boy who minced our meat for supper, and that he was my friend David’s older brother. But regardless of how little I thought of him, I couldn’t deny it then and I cant deny it now; Dick Strubbe was perfect, even at 14 years old.
But he was nothing out of the ordinary then; just another face I knew and an ordinary routine I kept for three years until there was a new boy working at the butcher shop around the time of my thirteenth birthday.
The whole world had been stretching and stretching until one day, it snapped. It was bound to break sometime with all the stretching that happens. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the whole country started to melt.
There was nothing like the Second World War—everybody went. Everybody did something. My mother kept bacon grease for the war efforts and gave away her silk stalkings. There was never, or has never, been a feeling like that again, a feeling of unity, of patriotism, of pride. Everybody was behind the war effort.
And Dick Strubbe was no exception. So he kissed his mother and the butcher shop goodbye and joined the Marine Corps.
David and I would walk home every day together and he would tell me about his older brothers going to war and how he couldn’t wait until he was old enough to go, too. Mrs. Strubbe had her hands full with her four boys, all driving her crazy wanting to go to war. And although it hurt worse than a bullet every time she kissed them goodbye, there was nothing she could do. Everyone went to war. There were barely any college football teams because there were so few men at home. They were off fighting a war all of us were behind but none of us really understood.
I started high school as the soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy and by the time The Bombs were dropped, I was smitten with Jack Welch.
As star of the football team and most popular guy in school, Jack swept me off my feet immediately. Every girl was jealous of me, because everyone wanted to be on Jack’s arm, everyone wanted to go with Jack to the school dances. But he picked me.
He certainly did have a way with making you feel special. He gave me his varsity jacket to wear around school and he would take me to the movies and out dancing. My best friend Patty and I would go to all of his home games, and he certainly had a way with the crowd; jumping up and down, scoring all the touchdowns. They would whoop and holler for him as he ate it all up. And just when I had begun to think he forgot me, he would score a touchdown and point to me on the bleachers. Still to this day, I don’t know if he was saying he scored the touchdown for me, or if he wanted to make sure I was paying close attention to how good he was. Either way, all the girls were wildly jealous.
When the war was ending, the country fell like confetti and the soldiers came home with their metals on their necks and their pride in their arms. Lucky for us girls, the government had made an arrangement that all of the soldiers could go back to high school when they returned home to get their high school degrees.
Patty and I walked by them in the halls on their first day, batting our eyelashes and waving hello. It was as innocent as the time period, but we had so much fun.
A laugh lit up the hallway and our attention drifted down the lockers and over the scattered soldiers and classmates until it landed in the arms of an army-green soldier with a familiar face. “Who is that?” Patty asked, poking me with her elbow, teasingly. The groups of girls around the Butcher Boy weren’t the only girls who knew he was handsome.
“Dick Strubbe, David’s brother,” my mouth said, but my mind moved in light years to a different galaxy where the stars were much brighter than they were here.
“Who knew David Strubbe had such a good looking older brother!” Patty giggled. I blushed as if the compliment was for me, and pulled her away to class.
After school I met up with David outside by the flagpole to walk home, like every day. But this time was different. This day was the day that changed everything.
Change is an obstacle, an ally, another birthday or another town. But today it happened to be in the form of a handsome soldier walking towards me and sticking out his hand with the greatest dexterity I had ever seen, smiling with one of those smiles you only see a couple times in a lifetime.
“Hi,” He said. “I’m Dick Strubbe”. And just like that, in those four words, stars exploded, worlds collided, and every color of the world changed, leaving us in the middle of a schoolyard shaking hands for the first time.
Of course, I didn’t know all of this at the time. How could I? I was only a girl with the football star’s jacket on my back. The only thing I felt were my cheeks blushing because of how handsome he was. The immense gravity of those first words and that first handshake was not obvious to me then. It was a gravity that would come with time.
But the time did start ticking on that walk home from school, and every walk home after that. It ticked on the football bleachers where the two of us, sharing a love for football, would watch my boyfriend score his infamous touchdowns. It ticked in the school library where he would make me laugh so hard we’d get in trouble for the noise. It ticked in every conversation. It ticked in the clarity of our “just friends” relationship, but also in how many similarities we shared. It was one of those few things in a lifetime that is natural.
I was floored by this man, who was somehow more myself than I was. I was still smitten with Jack—who couldn’t be? Most popular boy in school, star of the football team—but there was something in me that pulled away from his strong steady hands and towards something farther away, inside a golden rib cage made of charm and war stories. It was one of those few feelings in your life— the ones that don’t just stop or ever go away. The feelings that are more permanent than ink, more definite than war.
Senior year came and went and before I knew it, I was saying goodbye to Patty, David and all of my other friends. With a quick kiss goodbye, I left Jack behind without regret or grief. His appeal dwindled less and less ever since that first handshake in the middle of the schoolyard. I packed up my things for a college up in Oxford, just an hour or two drive from home.
I had come to be close with a lot of the soldiers, not just Dick. They were all wonderful friends I had in my life and it was sad to say goodbye to all of them. But it wasn’t goodbye for very long. A group of guys would come up to visit me, Dick included. I fixed them up with dates with girls in my sorority or other friends I had made and we would all go out together.

When our love was new
And each kiss an inspiration

Time stopped ticking at the end of my freshman year. Dick and I starting seeing each other in a different relationship. In one that involved goodnight kisses and hand holding. It didn’t start with a question or a confession. It didn’t start with any word at all. It started because it had to. Because there was nothing else we could do to stop it.
I fell in love with him sometime within the next couple years. It wasn’t a realization and it wasn’t a secret I kept from him until the “perfect time.” It was a series of moments of realization that his puzzle pieces fit into my puzzle pieces and they added up to make one long beautifully strung sentence I couldn’t help but say. When I did know it well enough to say it out loud, it didn’t hit me like a mack truck like they say it does. It didn’t even blind me or leave me in sudden shock. But instead it rolled together, like the passing of years, the turning of his smiles. And in the end it left the answer so obvious, so full that everything seemed empty without it. I loved him, and that was that.
He would take me out often and every night it was magic; dancing on the big Riverboat on the Kentucky River, going to big elegant ballrooms in fancy hotels in downtown Cincinnati. It wasn’t that expensive to do, neither of us had much money to spend. The Dance Floors would let you bring your own soda or alcohol so you didn’t even have to pay for drinks! Life was so much more romantic back then. One of my favorite places Dick would take me was to Moonlight Gardens, an outdoor concert hall, to listen to big bands like Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey. One night when we went to Moonlight Gardens we saw Hoagy Carmichael. After that, his song Stardust became our song. “…that was long ago. Now my consolation is in the stardust of a song” He would sing in my ear as we danced like the world didn’t matter, like nothing existed except for my head brushed against his cheek, my hand in his hand, our feet and the song. Our universes were under each other’s skin and no other world existed.
But a different world did exist and it was changing. It was pulling at the back of Dick’s dress coat and stepping on his heels until one day that was rainier than all the others, Dick’s unit was called back into service to try to get all of the Japanese out of the caves they were hiding in, in the South Pacific.
We didn’t say goodbye that day he left. We made promises.
"Don’t forget about me.” He whispered, his forehead leaning on mine.
His eyes closed for just an instant, as if taking a breathe only for the sake of breathing. And than the instant was up, the breath was breathed.
I looked up at this man who changed me in light-years, in beautiful ways. This man who would create galaxies for me. I had fallen in love with him so easily; my heart had leapt from my chest and into his hand and that was that. Whatever matter our bones are made of, whatever course our veins pumped blood, his and mine were the same.

The funny thing about life is that you meet thousands of people and they never affect you. But then you meet just one, and you’re rewritten.
His eyes looked down at me; cradling the answer I’d had since the moment I shook his hand in the schoolyard. The stars fell from the sky and seeped into his skin and I answered,
“I could never forget about you.”

Ah but that was long ago
Now my consolation is in the stardust of a song


I graduated college while he went away. We never had talked about going steady, but it didn’t need to be talked about. Jack had started calling on me again, wanting to talk to me. Dick hadn’t liked the idea of Jack calling me, even though he was typically never the jealous type. But while he was away, I didn’t want anything else. I would go out with friends often and to sorority parties when I was still in college. But there was this lack of interest in any other kind of relationship. It wasn’t an issue of staying faithful, it was simply whether I wanted to or didn’t want to. And every time, I didn’t.
When Dick came home, it was only him. We would see each other so often, the streetcar conductor that we called Briar, came to know Dick and I very well. Dick would take that street car to my house and eventually, Briar would go out of his route to stop on my block because he knew where Dick was going. As we got older, Dick and I would stay out later. And still, Briar would be on my block waiting for Dick to hop on to take the streetcar home at 12:30am. If Dick wasn’t there by that time, Briar would look up the street towards my house to see if he was coming and would wait for him to get on.
But sometimes, Dick could use his big jeep he had gotten from the war. He would drive to my house at the top of the hill to pick me up, and we would ride around in that big car with open sides and we thought we were the coolest thing that had ever happened to this world. Thinking back on it, I don’t know how my Mother and Dad let me ride around in that, or even let me go out with a man who was much older than I was and with totally different life experiences. My father was very strict about many different things. But Dick Strubbe wasn’t one of them. My parents were so fond of Dick that they didn’t really question his intentions or whether or not it was a good idea for me to go around with him. He was that kind of person that would make the strictest of parents not worry, even for a moment.
Finally, when Dick had seen me in every storm, when he found me in his sunrise and midnight phone calls, when he heard me in his songs and when he wrapped himself around my finger and every one of my nerves, we shifted into a different kind of forever and always.
Dick proposed on a Sunday afternoon when the world was warm. I wasn’t expecting him to propose because he didn’t have much money at all. But he proposed with a sureness, with a certainness, and with the same dexterity I had first noticed on that first day we shook hands. That same hand I shook in the schoolyard was putting his mother’s reset ring on my finger as I cried, our future so honest and apparent. We went back to his house, to his family who had come to be my own, and he had planned a surprise party for me with my Mother and Dad and all our good friends.
March 12th, 1955 was the hottest March 12th ever recorded in Cincinnati history, still to this day. My friends were my bridesmaids, his brothers were his groomsmen, and I walked down the isle in a Presbyterian church on the same block as the butcher shop where I had seen the Butcher Boy, many years before.
Our reception was at the University Club in University of Cincinnati, something we both cared about a lot. It was a beautiful place and didn’t need many decorations; just some flowers here and there, a band, and all our good friends. We danced to Stardust, and the crowd circling us fell away. Again, we danced like the world didn’t matter, like nothing existed except for my head brushed against his cheek, my hand in his hand, our feet and the song. Our universes were under each other’s skin and no other world existed, now permanently and forever.
The truth is I never thought I could love like that, bigger than the sum of my whole. And sometimes it felt like more. The love I had for him was in my blood and a part of who I was.

Beside the garden wall when stars are bright
You are in my arms
The nightingale tells his fairy tale
Of paradise where roses grew


The day after the warmest March 12th in Cincinnati history, it snowed, appropriately, and we were off on our honeymoon to visit our friends in Atlanta and then to Maryland and Washington D.C., just exploring the country and seeing where we would end up.
A couple years came and went and something had shifted; we changed from one heart to three heads as a baby was on the way.

At this time, we had been living in an old apartment with big rooms. We had very close friends and we would have the most fun in the world, having small dinner parties, playing fun games. Dick, of course, was always the one who made things fun. With that kind of smile that you only see a couple times in a lifetime, he was magic and trailed fairy dust behind him, wherever he went.

We had the same interests and we wanted the same things. We both loved theater, University of Cincinnati basketball tournaments and football games. We thrived on the same passions. We found value in the same things like travel, and interesting people. Our personalities were the same. The only difference between us was that he liked Scotch and I preferred Jack Daniels.
I had known it when I was 17 and I know it now; he was more myself than I was. Wherever souls come from, his and mine are from the same place.

And of all the things we loved together, nothing could have compared to the feeling of having a baby. When she came, we named her Betsy and loved her completely and utterly. As she looked up at me with the eyes of the man I loved, I learned a new dimension of love, a whole different world of it, under her tiny fingernails and behind her wide eyes. Finally, I had the stillness of a fireplace, the security of home, and the warmness of white sheets that the three of us would tuck into. And as I watched him pick up my little girl and weep with love, I knew that she was just as much his as she was mine.

By the time Emily was born, we had moved into our first house in a beautiful suburb and we couldn’t be happier. Dick loved Emily; he loved to play games with her, to tease her, to make her laugh. And as she grew into a toddler, we found out that laughing was something she did quite often, and would continue to do often for the rest of her life. She made us happy and made us whole.

We were over the moon for our 3rd daughter, Nancy, the same year Neil Armstrong landed below us and made one giant step for mankind. If you ask me what the most important moment of 1961 was, I wouldn’t say the day Man landed on the moon, I would say it was the first night we brought Nancy home and Dick held her and gazed at her for hours without moving, stardust falling from his eyes as she made craters in his soul.

People mark time with the turning of years. I marked time with the turning of his mannerisms. And after he had snowed, after he had grown petals again, and after he had shined like summer, we found ourselves tangled together in the teenage world that fell like endless leaves.

Our girls had bloomed from babies like the flower bulbs Dick planted outside the new house in the woods we bought after Nancy was born. The girls had grown up adoring Dick, sitting on his lap as he teased and tickled them. He was stern when he had to be and never put up with arguing or getting home past curfew. But he taught the girls how to enjoy life. He would take us to the nature center or the zoo, where he invested his time in, and everyone loved him. In the winter, we were the only ones allowed to skate on the lake by the Cincinnati Nature Center because of his connections and the friends who adored him. We had an easy life, a life that brought us a lot of happiness.

At one point when Betsy was around 10 or 11, Dick went into a phase of building miniature airplanes. I would sit in our basement and help him build them, just like he would do when I wanting to do something. Because we just wanted to be together. No matter how many years it had been, it was never enough. For the most part, our lives and our interests were all very fun. We brought the girls to sports games and on sailing trips when we could afford it. Dick always had such fun things planned for me and for the girls. I still don’t know how he thought of some of the things he had planned.
And everyone loved him. Everyone. Stardust trailed from his heels and out of his mouth and everyone would follow him, asking for more of his exaggerated war stories and clinging to how fun he made every part of life.
We had raised our daughters into teenagers and, with another fifty good years to spend out in the woods that we both loved so much, Dick and I decided to go to Africa.
Dick was a frustrated geologist, so Africa seemed appropriate. But mostly he wanted to go to Africa because he loved the land, he loved animals. He had a fascination of the earth at its purist form, he had a feeling of home in nature, which I loved and understood. We saved our money for two years and then were off on an African safari, something that nobody did. It was very unheard of and I admired him for that, for seeing possibility in things unheard of.
I admired and loved him for a lot of things, really. For a lot of things and every thing. Every birthday he would have a surprise for me. Often times a big surprise party or an artist paint a picture of the house from my favorite view. He put thought into everything, whether it was a present or a compliment. He made life so perfect for me and for the girls. The fact of the matter is that he completely saturated me. I hear of people who have problems and unhappiness with their marriage. God, I couldn’t even begin to understand it.
We grew together like that; we lived in an adventure whether it was on the plains of Africa or making model airplanes in our basement. We danced in the living room, we laughed until our stomachs were sore, we took walks in our woods, and we grew just like that. We grew and grew and grew until Dick couldn’t grow anymore. His soul had out run his body and his heart was too big for his lungs.

Though I dream in vain
In my heart it will remain
My stardust melody
The memory of love's refrain

He taught me love. And I loved him in all his forms, in all the kinds of moments that he was. But no amount of love could’ve been equivalent to how much I felt at his reaction at this particular moment in time.
We thought it was another case of Bronchitis. We had just started to figure out that maybe his lifetime of smoking could be bad for lungs and might be the cause for his reoccurring case of bronchitis. But instead of, “take some cough medicine” like usual, the doctor said, “We’d like to run a scope down your throat”.
They diagnosed his tumor as the deadly kind. The kind that was darker than jealousy, and stronger than love.
The unbreakable man was breakable. This man that so many had loved for so long, this man that I had found universes inside and galaxies with, this man who had my world under the skin of his hands and all of my daughters’ hearts, was no longer invincible, as we thought he would always be. He had a time bomb inside of him. The girls and I heard it ticking always. Sometimes the ticking sounded like screams. But Dick never heard it.
He never showed one moment of sadness, and wouldn’t allow his girls or his siblings to feel it. He lived every moment of every day the same as he had before, if not happier. He went through chemo, without one complaint about feeling sick, without one instance of sadness. We all heard what the doctor said, but I think we all honestly believed he would live. After all, it was Dick Strubbe. Dick Strubbe with the miracle hands and the pride in his arms. Dick Strubbe, the army green soldier with the smile you only see a couple times in a lifetime. Dick Strubbe, with the sense of adventure and the stardust falling from the backs of his heels and out of his mouth. Dick Strubbe, the man who would later tell his girls while lying in the hospital bed, “Oh, I’ve been around the world by the time I was 18. I have no regrets.”
Betsy found love right before this happened and got engaged. We were so happy for Betsy and for the wonderful man she was marrying. None of us ever said it, but we were all happy Dick could walk at least one of his daughters down the isle. The wedding came almost a year after Dick had been diagnosed in early October of 1983.
Dick walked Betsy down the isle, very weak and shaking and with no hair from his chemotherapy, but I had never seen anything more handsome in my life. He was proud of his accomplishments. He was proud of his job. He was proud of his work in the Marines. But never in my life have I ever seen him so proud as that day he walked his eldest daughter down the isle, his fragile arms holding heavier pride, his face gleaming.
At the reception, I was talking to family friends, telling the story about how Betsy and her husband met like I had done three hundred times earlier, when I heard a familiar tune start to play. Still to this day, I don’t know if Stardust started playing by mere coincidence or if Dick had arranged it. I don’t know for sure, but I do know the surprise-loving man I had come to know all too well.
He could barely move his legs so we just swayed; the most perfect dance I have ever danced. He sang in my ear as we danced like the world didn’t matter, like nothing existed except for my head brushed against his cheek, my hand in his hand, our feet and the song. Our universes were under each other’s skin and no other world existed.
October 17th, 1983, Dick Strubbe died.
Death had played his hand, and won him, no matter how good my cards were. Days turned into decades, bookmarked with angel kisses. And every morning, it’s like I lose him again. No amount of mornings, no amount of losses could make up for it.
I think of him often and always, and when I do, I tend to wonder how far he has travelled. Maybe Africa again, maybe back on that sail boat in the Bahamas. Maybe somewhere he had never even imagined. Wherever he’s traveled to, I imagine that he traveled with all the other brilliant people of the universe to a beautiful secret. And all the best ideas would be there, with their solutions and their spectacles. And beautiful thoughts would fall like springtime rain. And I imagined one day, he would take me there with him.
He made a promise to me thirty-three years ago that he could never forget about me. A man of his word and the love of my lifetime, Dick Strubbe is waiting for me with a Jack Daniels and a record of Stardust.

Sometimes I wonder why I spend
The lonely nights dreaming of a song
The melody haunts my reverie
And I am once again with you