Delayed Honeymoon Pt. 04: Final

The obvious question for me is, "Doesn't that lie and all the years since make you feel guilty about deceiving your husband?" The answer is, "Hell, yes." For years my conscience bothered me. That lie weighed heavy on me, if for no other reason than that it was the only time that I have been dishonest in our whole marriage. Many a time I was tempted to remove that weight, confess to my deceitfulness, but I never did. I was forced to face the fact that if I cleared my conscience, I might feel better, but Nick would have been devastated. Maybe I'm rationalizing, but I think that if he loved me enough to give me freedom on the ship to have that wonderful experience, I should give him the happiness with his son by accepting the weight of a guilty conscience. This is why this essay will be kept private until the secret no longer matters.

In other things, with Nick's approval, and a lot of teasing, I continued my affair with Glenn for some years, even if, inevitably, our sexual activities were eventually limited by age. I don't know how, exactly, to describe our relationship - not really a love affair. Probably the best description, in modern parlance, would be to say that he was a very close dear friend with privileges. Unfortunately, he passed away peacefully several years ago so he will not see his godson's twenty-first birthday, but he was a significant part of his formative years. More important, he did see his prize student, me, receive her PhD and, as I stood on the platform with tears of happiness in my eyes, he was the one who put my PhD hood on my shoulders. I loved him to the end as a very, very dear friend, lover and mentor. I still miss him.

So, to end all this, I have to say that "The Cruise from Hell" was really the "delayed honeymoon" of dreams, and could not have turned out better!