R.I.P.

We broke up 9 years ago.  We were together for 3 years, engaged for two of them.  We lived together for one year.
He was a fun and generous guy who always wanted to be the life of the party. He was the clown in the room, the guy with the loudest laugh. And the widest smile.
Three things stand out in my mind when I think of him.
We took some rather cool vacations together so he sparked the travel bug in me. I really need to get moving on that!  Time is short and anything can happen.
He introduced me to sushi, which I now love! HOW did I never eat it before I met him?
And sailing! He owned a sailboat, which made me love the water even more than I already did. Sailing is too expensive for me. He had a plaque that said: “Sailing: the fine art of getting wet and becoming ill while slowly going nowhere at great expense.” Maybe a jet ski for me!
And for good or bad, he taught me a lot about myself and what not to do in a relationship. That is a good thing. I hope he worked through his stuff too. No need to get into the bad things!
Even though we were both ready to end our relationship, we parted on relatively good terms.  We seemed to get along much better when we weren’t a couple. We chatted a bit a couple years later when he told me that his dog, who I was rather fond of, had died.
Facebook is often the deliverer of news and my random look at his profile last week with the RIP messages strewn about, make me pause and the ‘oh crap,’ out of my mouth was surprise and sincere.  Of course, I spent the next day or two going over everything that was written in the comments and on his profile. Just to get a sense of who he was all the years after me.  The comments had slowed down because he died 4 months ago.  I feel like I slept through it, in a way.
I always thought that I would run into him at some random time, probably travelling. We’d go to lunch and have a good talk about the old days, reminiscing about the good times, skimming over the bad and hopefully parting ways with a little more understanding about each other.
That won’t happen now.
RIP, Bob. You will be missed.