Jerome Lemon

We love you daddy and miss you very much, nookie

Jerome saved my life and he never knew it. Back in the summer of 1999 I was going through a stage in my life, turning 30 and being single, where I wanted to have someone special. On a trip to Charleston, SC I met a great girl who shared the same interests and traits. It happen quite accidentally as we attended a concert and she and a friend were dancing in front of me when she wheeled around and knocked my five dollar beer from my hands. I just smiled my smile, apologized for her carelessness and drained the Bud from my shoes. She liked my wit and charm so we spent the next few songs talking to the annoyance of her friend. We walked and got to know one another forcing the blaring music to take second stage to our conversation. It just clicked between Leslie and me. By the end of the long weekend we feel madly in love. We tried to make the distance thing work but the pressure was too great on her and her family. Our age difference was a few years and her mother disapproved of my career in law enforcement and wanted Leslie to do better finding a boyfriend. They thought that I would be a distraction for her final years in college. She and I thought differently. We wrote letters, talked daily for hours sharing those simple realistic dreams that young lovers weave together. In November I met her on my birthday for a romantic weekend in Charleston. Late in the evening on a well worn patch of ground at the Battery under a pale November moon I presented a ring and asked for her hand in marriage. I knew it was going to be a good thing when I saw her bite her lower lip to control her expression. Life was good for a day. The weekend was coming to an end and while we were saying good by as I got ready to head back to western North Carolina; she looked at me with an expression that I never really can remove from my mind. Her lips quivered and her eyes were flooded with tears. She couldn’t go through with it and go against her family. She slowly took the ring off her finger and placed it on the dresser. I was hurt, confused but managed to be a gentleman. I hugged her and kissed the top of her head and told her it would be all right and to keep the ring. I said goodbye and left. I was in shock and don’t really remember much about leaving the city except how nice it would be for me to drive off the Cooper River bridge if I was going up highway 17 instead of I-26. How I drove the twenty miles is beyond me. I was crying and just an emotional wreck. I had for thirty years kept everyone away from my heart. My armor had been penetrated and it had never happened before. I clearly should not have been driving but I couldn’t make myself pull over. I wanted to get home where I know it was safe. I was three hundred miles from the shelter of loved ones and friends. I never had been in this position and I didn’t know what would help but I did know that I should talk to someone. I looked west as I sped on I-26 and saw Jerome, a SC State Trooper. He was outside his cruiser talking to a motorist parked in front of him. He had stopped to write a citation and something told me to pull over so I eased in behind his patrol car and waited for him to get free. Once he finished with his task he walked back to help what he thought was some lost soul and found me in such a sad shape. He let me get out of my SUV and we talked alongside the passing cars heading west back to their realities from their time in Charleston. I was trying to calm down and tell him my story. His pleasant demeanor and sympathetic eyes helped me by just knowing that some stranger really could care about me. He quietly listened. I wrapped up my story and he offered to talk to Leslie, to go and find her and tell her god knows what but he cared about a hurting stranger enough place himself in that awkward situation. He offered to talk to her parents to give me a chance, all that because he cared. One of the greatest weights I had ever felt was lifted off my body once he calmed me down. Jerome gave me one of his SC Highway Patrol business cards and he wrote his cell phone and home phone numbers on the back. He instructed me to call if I ever needed to talk and to remember that I was not alone. As I got back in my truck Jerome said it would all be different in a few weeks and for me to just wait my time and to do something good for somebody. I made it home. I took time and I started a practice of helping people as he had quietly done for me. His business card rested in my wallet; only coming out when I was depressed or felt like I wasn’t doing the things in life like I should. At first I would pull that card out several times a day but as the hurt eased I turned to the card less. It was a good feeling knowing that the card was there if I needed it. I wrote a letter to his supervisor and told my story and how I think Jerome saved my life. I never heard anything from it and I hope Jerome knew. Things did get better as he predicted and a year passed. I met someone special exactly one year to the day that I met Jerome. She was good for me and Jerome’s card moved further back in my wallet and was seldom touched. Four years later in 2004 we were married and took our honeymoon in Charleston. We spent a week of gray February days in Charleston. On one of those days I slipped a small envelope that contained a letter and a well worn business card back to its rightful owner into a street side mailbox. The note, simple in content but powerful in meaning, said that I didn’t need the card anymore that I had found someone who would be there for me. I wished him well and thanked Jerome profusely. I walked away from that mailbox knowing that I was a strong man who had closed a chapter of his life in the most positive manner. Vanessa saw me but never asked, she just reached out her hand for mine, smiled that relaxed smile of hers and we walked away from one of my proudest moments. She was unaware and oblivious but I had grown up. Eight months later, October in that same year was painful. I caught Vanessa, my only real love in my long life, cheating on our marriage with a family friend who was in the Army. It had been going on awhile, hidden by veils of lies and cover ups. She was embarrassed but never admitted the depth to the betrayal. We struggled to work things out for three weeks but she moved out on October 27. Once again my world had ended and I needed a Jerome to help me through my pain. Jerome would not be there, his world ended that day too. Staff Sgt. Jerome Lemon, a South Carolina state trooper, died in the war in Iraq He was killed when his convoy was ambushed Wednesday morning. I found out because I read the Charleston Post and Courier Newspaper online daily. I love Charleston and like to keep abreast of what is going on in my foster city. I have never cried or felt so at a loss as I did when I found out he was gone. I knew that I would survive; after all Jerome said I would. But how could God take away such a decent and caring soldier while he let live the one who stole my wife? I was and always will be at a loss to understand that. I attended Jerome’s receiving. I had clandestinely driven to North Charleston to be there. I had to be there. I could not face his family as my emotions were too strong. It took all of the strength I had not to go to his wife and tell her how much he meant to me. I am sure the caliber of man that Jerome was would have told his wife of the guy he had helped one day. She might have remembered me and I was scared because I didn’t want to hurt his wife by dredging up a memory of how great he was. I was there for myself to say good bye, one stranger in the back of the room shedding real tears of love for a man he only met for eight minutes. I hate that damn war and all that it has cost us. I’ll remember Jerome till I can’t draw another breath as he taught me compassion for mankind is the greatest task that we should labor on. Eight minutes with a man on the side of an interstate changed my life and how I lived since. I love and miss you Jerome.

May the grace of God, the love of Jesus, and the peace of the Holy Spirit be with you and your family forever.