You really do need all ? (By: Marie)

“You really do need all 5,738 pictures of me that you have saved to your computer.” Hanging over my shoulder while staring at my computer screen I knew he was preparing to tell me once again how it was a shame to delete all that I had spent hours cataloging and filing—though his numbers were a gross exaggeration.

How right he was—I would start to hit the delete button and then couldn’t bring myself to do it. His sigh prompted a responding one from me as our parallel gazes studied the screen. “I remember when I first saw that picture posted on the Forum.” His breath close to my ear was disconcerting as I looked at the picture of him having just hurled a rose toward a sea of up-stretched hands. The photographer had snapped at just the right moment and the shadow of the long-stemmed rose fell on his white jacket.

I found my voice, “Somehow, that is the picture that embodies my experiences of the first tour. I was at six concerts and I came to realize that as you launched that rose, the expression on your face showed the joy you had found in performing in Il Divo.”

“And I remember the light in your eyes as you handed me a rose. I loved your spirit of fun and excitement.” Urs closed his eyes and leaned his head back. Those first halcyon days! None of them had realized the phenomenon they would become, the impact they would have.

Our reveries were interrupted when Carlos walked into the room. He came into our space and claimed it for his own. “Only pictures of the Swiss Man there, I see.” His tone was joking, but I detected an undercurrent. Carlos was not to be overlooked. “I was never your favorite,” he could not keep the pouting lip from quivering into laughter as he reached forward and patted my shoulder.

“My dear senor, you became very special to me when I realized that without your wonderful deep voice the others were ‘just three more tenors!’” We all laughed at this idea—as if!!!

“What is all of this hilarity and I am not even included?” David thought all fun was enhanced by his presence. If a child’s first laugh truly spawns fairies, one can imagine the population boom in fairyland at David’s first infectious chortle.

“Just a little trip down Remembering Road,” was Carlos serious or was he having us on?

The other two bit, “Memory Lane!” Oh yeah, they had been had—the Spaniard’s smile was almost imperceptible.

David looked past Carlos and Urs at my computer screen. “Hmmm,” was accompanied by an exaggerated and dramatic rubbing of chin. It got him an affirmative nod from Carlos, and eyes roll from me and a smug smirk from Urs. Ah, David—that incomparable talent! “Well, hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” he announced. Seb had quietly joined us.

“Are you three bothering this lady again,” a rhetorical question as Seb knew the presence of any or all of them was always welcome. They had brought fun back into my life. Urs had once said, “And you’re having fun again,” it was a statement that required an answer.

“Yes, I am.”

“Good.”

And that had summed it up. Discovering their beautiful music, making new friends through their Forum, traveling to places I had never dreamed of (to the great surprise of my friends and family) and finding the me I had lost somewhere along the way and actually getting to interact with these wonderfully kind young men to some degree, had indeed added zest to my life.

“You don’t spend as much time on the Forum as you once did,” Seb’s voiced an observation, not an indictment.

“No, I don’t.” My voice was quiet. The place had changed—or had it? True there were technical and cosmetic changes and as always, glitches. But I was wondering if the ‘good old days’ that many seemed to long for were like the ones in our everyday lives. Time simply passed, marred or embellished by events, but always moving forward—never to go back.

“I’ll always keep in touch with the fans through the Forum,” Seb had certainly always been the one to do so.

“I always know where you ladies are,” David had laughed to some of us.

Like the Cheshire Cat’s grin, Carlos’ wiggling eyebrows seemed to remain in the room. Their public personas remained unchanged but their lives had evolved at a pace sometimes exhilarating, sometimes frightening.

“At least save the best ones.” He smiled because he knew most of those pictures would remain right where they were on my computer. Urs was the last to fade away, he usually was in my Divo reveries.

They would never really be gone. Though the initial emersion in everything Divo could not be sustained, it had had a good run. There are wonderful memories and the promise of more to be made. I will not wish for what is past; I know to be grateful for what was and what is and what is yet to be. There will still be concerts to attend and sometimes Divos to interact with. And always and forever there will be the music—Il Divo—and neither they nor we will ever be the same.