Road to Re-Awakening

The following story is complete fiction. It never happened and any similarity to real life people/situations is a bizarre coincidence.    

Part 1 - Intro

The past four years had been rough. Each day had been spent caring for my wife, watching her slowly succumb to the cancer destroying her once vibrant body. The doctors said it was a fast growing type and that treatment would likely fail. We got four years instead of the two they originally projected, but it was hard. Let me rewind a bit...

We met in college and instantly had a bond. We were soulmates. We had a common interests in a variety of things, including sex. We were both bisexual and liked to experiment both together and apart. Mostly, it was together since we both liked watching each other with other people. We didn't really get involved with the swinging community since we liked to select our partners and develop a rapport with them first. We were young and it was easy to find people interested in three and four way encounters.

When we graduated, Jan went on for her masters degree and I jumped into the business world. Our sex life slowed a bit but still was exciting. When she finished her degree we decided to start our own company. For the first year, I was working two jobs but by then we had gotten our business profitable. The next two years were fun. We worked well together and frequently had mid-day breaks for sex. One of the delivery guys was a favorite of both of ours. He was sexy, hung and open to most anything. He usually left our office with his balls empty and a smile on all of our faces.

When we decided to start a family, though, all of the outside sex stopped. We thought that once we had a kid or two, we'd go back but work, raising kids and other stuff conspired to rarely let that happen. If one of us could get some outside play time once a month we were doing good and we encouraged each other to do it. Finding time for both of us to enjoy the pleasures of a third or fourth was a once a year event at most.

We had two kids, one boy and one girl. They were just as different as Jan and I were similar. Both were good kids, though. We tried to be open about our relationship and when they were old enough to understand, we gave them a deep understanding of sex and the types of relationships people can have and that it was up to them to choose what they wanted. They knew about our past and that it was ok to experiment. Just be respectful and have fun.

Ron had just graduated college and Lea was a year behind when we got the cancer diagnosis. I hired a full time manager, Sean, to take care of the company while I tried to hold our family together. He did a great job and kept us informed, letting us deal with life without worrying about the business too. She passed one week shy of our twenty-seventh anniversary. The kids and I were devastated even though we knew it was coming. We grieved together for a week before the kids went back to their lives. It took me much longer. I spent a year depressed and unsure of what to do next. My fifty fifth birthday happened during that year and it just made me feel old and alone.

Ron and Lea both tried to get me to get out of my rut and they finally suggested I take a road trip. Go east to visit Lea and then west to visit Ron. "We'll go camping like we used to and do, taking day trips up to the mountains" Ron said and Lea replied "Eeew. I like running water, bathrooms and a real kitchen, thank you. You can stay at my place."

Part of me didn't want to intrude on their lives but they were adamant that they both wanted to see me at their own homes. Once I relented, we planned the trip together for mid-summer. It gave me a few weeks to organize my stuff and plot my route. Every few days I got messages from my kids making sure I wasn't going to back out. I knew they were talking to each other from their calls to me, Ron on Monday night and Lea on Thursday. There were many other random times in between, too.

When the departure day approached, I packed the SUV with most of my camping gear. Some online shopping had distracted me and I now had a mission for my life, for a few weeks anyway. A few items of my existing camping gear I replaced, but most of it still worked from the old days when the family would spend a week in nature as our summer family vacation.
Sean was happy that I was trying to get back into normal life and told me that he had some plans to grow the business and we'd talk about it when I got back. I told a few close friends about my trip and most seemed to be relieved. A few were more excited about the trip than I was. "Take lots of pics, Ben" they said.

I felt sad as I locked up the house and climbed into the SUV. It felt like I was I was leaving forever, not for a few weeks. My route took me on some of the most boring interstates I could find until I got closer to Lea. The worst part was that I knew I'd be taking some of these same dull roads on my way back west and that it would get even worse when I got out on the plains. I wasn't looking forward to counting trees to keep myself amused. Music would have to be my savior to keep me alert. The GPS didn't really give me any encouragement by telling me just how many miles I still had to go.

My stop for the first night was a nondescript motel just off the interstate. I didn't want to deal with other humans so I picked up a salad and drink at the drive thru and checked into my motel as fast as I could. The news was just as depressing as it was at home and I dipped into one of the bottles of whiskey I'd brought along. Thankfully, I only had a couple drinks and wasn't hung over the next morning when I took off for my daughter's place.