Sandra Diane Strassenburg

His loneliness can be found in the tree reaching upward
Touching the sky in dark silence
A naked splendor
His deepest loves remain within the heart
Truth the makings of the soul
A timeless image
His passions are hidden from all but the wind
Who travels the nights
In search of nature’s purity
A simple beauty
His innocent birth reflects upon the aging earth
As the morning explodes in glory
And a proud shadow
Echoes the creation of man

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Winter 1971

What love have you to touch my dawn
With dew moist lips upon my own
The world sleeps
So we may be alone with the parting night
At peace with ourselves . . .
I have given my love to you and the day
What heart have you to turn away?

Sandra Diane Strassenburg - Spring 1972

If ever I knew a person whose life was a fragile gift like a thistle’s seed on the wind that person would be Sandy. She lived with personal demons created for her by well meaning adults when she was twelve years old.

She was informed that she would not live to see her thirtieth birthday due to a birth defect received while in her mother’s womb. At the time, the early 1950s the new drug thalidomide (side effects either unknown or kept from patients for obvious reasons) to assist mothers dealing with the extreme discomfort of pregnancy, created severe physical defects in fetuses. Many of our generation were scarred by this, as were their parents emotionally.

She is the one person that fills me with deep regret caused by my inconsistent behavior while she and I were married. We met the year I returned from Vietnam.

I was filled with the nightmares of PTSD brought on by combat experiences impossible to forget without chemical assistance. The aid I chose was alcohol, which kept me in its fog throughout the years she and I lived together and beyond.

This is not an excuse, but a fact. None-the-less the remorse I still feel eleven years after her death is as real now as it was the last time I saw and spoke with her.

That night, Christmas Eve 1981, I had visited my Aunt Betty Titmus at Saint Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson, New York. The weather was cold and wet, but not cold enough for snow. As I drove my old 1962 Mercedes Benz along 25A where it runs past Port Jeff harbor, I saw a woman hitch hiking. She wore a short skirt and a light spring jacket. I slowed and stopped to pick her up.

As the car rolled by her, I saw her face and wondered if she would get in. She did and made some kind of comment about how weird it was that I was the person who stopped.

I felt the same way.

I had completed more than two years of sobriety by practicing the 12 step of AA by then. Sandy was drunk and had had a fight with her family, walked out of the house determined to get to The Four Corners Bar in Setauket. My AA sponsor would’ve told me to try to get her sober, which I did by delaying the drive, and parking behind the bar to talk for around three hours.

We discussed what happened with her and her family, and the harder I tried to persuade her stay out of the bar, to go home and spend Christmas night where I thought she should, the more determined she became to do the opposite.

She finally left the car when she had gotten disgusted with my attempts and like a moth drawn to light, entered the bar without a glance back to see if I watched.