Dating: Our first "real" date

With Marilyn’s return to a month long temping assignment at Xerox I was able to use our connection from T. G. I. Friday’s to ask her out. We went to lunch a couple of times and then the big date: dinner and a movie.

The dinner was late because the only showing of the movie we agreed to see started at midnight. It was somewhat a cult showing, much like the Rocky Horror Picture Show" and an event like the "Sound of Music" would achieve later, except no one dressed up the parts. It was "Fantasia," the perfect combination culture, and, well, lack of culture. I hadn’t really thought it out but it was the perfect attempt to appeal to something of her interest, whatever that may have been. The classical music should have appealed to her sophistication and the cartoon should have appealed to her inner child.

As it was, late on a workday, a long day, actually into the next day, she fell asleep on me. I literally mean this in all ways. My arm was supporting her head. Even then she had a definite sleeping pattern to her breathing, not quite a snore, that I would forever name from that night on as sleep breathing. It retained this name long after the breathing sounds became louder and always faster than I could fall asleep.

Well, there I was caught between chagrin that I had asked her out to something that put her asleep and something approach happiness that she felt comfortable enough to go to sleep on me. Worse, my arm was going to sleep from trying to maintain its position and not disturb her. She woke up on her own a little bit later after a crescendo.

I think I started falling in love with her on this date. Even if she wasn’t comfortable enough with me to have fallen asleep and it was simply because I put her in a situation that due to the lateness, the long day, and the soothing classical music anyone in their right mind would have dropped off, or worse she was bored, she accepted this date, however ridiculous, to be with me.

What sealed the deal was what happened when I dropped her off at her parents’ place, I kissed her, twice. It just felt like the right thing to do. It was a combination of her lips being so soft and the first kiss just seemed too short. After we were married, she commented on those first kisses, so it must have seemed right to her as well.

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Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.