EVERY Valentine’s Day, he bought me chocolates and grapes and took me dancing.  He name was Keith Hall, my buddy and best friend. He looked out for me until the day he died, rather tragically, in a car accident.
An involuntary bachelor for five days a week, because his lovely wife worked at Linden while he worked in Georgetown, Keith adopted my teenaged daughter and I, providing us with real friendship and companionship, because he was lonely and missing his own family. So we probably filled a gap until he reunited with his own family at weekends.  He certainly filled a gap in our lives.
He was protective, courteous, gentlemanly, and never once crossed the line — in word or deed.  He was my 3am friend.  I am prone to nightmares, and he would talk me out of my fear of nameless and nameable bogies over the phone until I fell asleep.
My daughter, Maria, was absolutely spoiled, and her room was the more comfortable of the two bedrooms in my then rented apartment in Alberttown.  My son and I had to share one bedroom, while she occupied the other.  She is very artistic and was going through a pink phase. So she demanded pink satin bed linen, and pink curtains and mosquito net.  I had given away my sewing machine to a single-mother who sewed for a living, so every night when I returned home from work, I would settle down to painstakingly stitch the fineries she demanded by hand.
I am a bedroom, garden and veranda person, not a livingroom person.  Satin is a very difficult material to control and stitch at the same time, so while Maria, Keith’s son and I occupied her bed, Keith would sit on the ‘Berbice chair’ in Maria’s room and patiently hold the material in place while I stitched, night after night – sometimes until next morning, until Maria’s room was finally decorated as per her specifications.  He would eat my vegetarian food without complaint, and spend hours on end entertaining my teenage daughter, who had the intelligence of a professor and always complained of being bored, nearly driving me crazy.  He often talked me out of killing her when her tantrums led me to the brink of murder, and his quiet voice of reason was a calming factor in my life for years.
On Friday evenings, a group of us would sit at Gains’ Bar in seclusion, courtesy of the proprietor, Ricky, and the boys would ply me with juice while they enjoyed the beverage of their choice.  Others came and went periodically, but the core group was Clinton Williams of GNIC, Avinash Bhagwandin (‘Avi’) of Laparkan, Patrick Persaud of Patmar, Keith and I.  I have always enjoyed being with males than with females.  For some reason or the other, the gender to which I belong never seem to like me and almost always create problems for me, often blindsiding me with their dishonesty and vindictiveness.
The world is not an easy one for women alone, and Keith saw the many instances of advantage taken over me and decided that I needed to be re-married.  I was in complete disagreement, because I do not need a man to validate me and I know first-hand that the person who is supposed to be a woman’s protector can do her irreparable harm and leave lifelong scars instead.
However, Keith and ‘Avi’ appointed themselves ‘aguas (matchmakers)’, choosing from among the options I had someone who was charming, personable, intelligent, and good-looking from my cultural background; someone with an equable temperament who respected me highly, and always treated me with absolute courtesy;  someone who had the same religious and political convictions as I had — as a matter of fact, he was a prime participant in national activities, and often accompanied government delegations during negotiations overseas;  someone who had enough assets and resources that never again would I have had to go in need.
I was tempted for a short while, but finally chickened out, because I did not have the courage to trust anyone with my emotions again.  ‘Avi’ gave me up as a lost cause and, for the first time, Keith got mad at me, but eventually relented because he always respected the rights and wishes of others.
When Ricky called to tell me that Keith had been killed in an accident, I reeled – and until now, I miss him like crazy.  He has left a perennial hole in my heart, because he was closer to me than my own brothers.
The gossips had a field day with our relationship, but in a lifetime where I have suffered immeasurably from rumour and the ill-will of others, even people whom I have helped, I have learned never to get close to anyone because I have almost always been let down by persons whom I have trusted, who prefer to listen to vicious gossip rather than judge me by my own actions and personality.
But Keith Hall was a constant in my life… until the day he died, and the chocolates and grapes on Valentine’s Day stopped.