Good Bye, Keanu

Here is a little tid-bit about Cathryn's past. From the age of 12 to 17 I had a relationship (albeit one-sided) with Keanu Reeves. I watched Speed the day before my 12th birthday and I fell in love! From that point until I returned from a summer in Spain when I was 17, I collected and proudly displayed over 200 pictures of Keanu throughout my room. Some might call this obsessive, I call it young love! Within those 5 years I learned everything there was to know about the man. I saw every (the good and the very bad) movie he ever made. I waited for the better part of a day to see him in concert. I was dedicated.

When it came to my room, some of the bigger pictures I had included movie theatre cardboard displays. More often then not I could ask a theatre if they would hold one for me after his movie went out of theatres, they would and I would get the pleasure of a life size picture of Keanu in my room.

When I went through the taking down process when I was 17 I made a scrap book of the smaller pictures but when it came to the life size cutouts I just couldn't throw them away. So I convinced my dad to store them in his garage. Jump forward about 10 years, I'm married, I have a kid, a house and a garage of my own and my dad now thinks it is time that Keanu comes to live with me. He is happy to throw the posters away if I don't want them but if I do, then I need to take them. At that point I was able to throw away all but one, my Walk in the Clouds billboard.

On one visit to Santa Rosa (when Paul wasn't with me). I packed Keanu into my car, drove home and put him in the shed in the backyard, making sure Paul saw nothing (he doesn't quite understand or appreciate the hold a first love can have on a person!). Jump forward 2 more years. Now we are in the present. This past weekend we did a little spring cleaning. I was cleaning the office and Paul was in charge of the shed. I have been in the mood to purge recently so I ran out to Paul and told him whatever he felt like tossing then he had my full blessing. I went back inside and started de-cluttering the office. All of a sudden I hear a knock, knock, knock on the sliding glass door, I turn around and there is Keanu and Paul. Keanu, always with the look of love in his eyes, Paul with not so much love in his eyes. My heart jumped into my throat, my shoulders started to tense up and panic gripped my vocal cords. I couldn't speak, but when I looked at Paul, the living, breathing, compassionate, humorous, love of my life, I opened the door and said to Paul "put it in the toss pile." Immediately the tension released from my shoulders and I breathed a sigh of relief. Good bye, Keanu.