To Selena, With Love

Introduction

A month before she was murdered, Selena and I drove out to the property we'd bought in Corpus Christi. It was a beautiful piece of land, with a creek bordering one side and a hill that seemed to be the perfect place for us to build a house for the family we were planning. We loved driving out there at sunset and imagining our future together. Selena always told me that she wanted five kids, which made me laugh.
"Let's try having one baby first," I'd tell her. "Then we'll talk."
This particular evening, Selena and I sat on top of our hill watching the wide Texas sky turn every color from pale blue to bright peach to inky purple. "I want to raise our kids around lots of animals," Selena said. "Every kind of animal there is."
"You can't put all kinds of animals together," I teased. "You do that, you'll come outside and find nothing but a mound of feathers where something ate your chickens."
Selena leaned her head on my shoulder. "Just think, Chris. This is where our kids are going to be running around and playing someday soon. Can you believe it?"
I could, "I told her. We continued to sit there until nearly dark, even though what I really wanted to do was jump up and start clearing our property right away. I didn't want there to be any coyotes or rattlesnakes around to bite our kids. I wanted to protect my family.
It didn't turn out that way, of course. I wasn't able to protect Selena."

"After Selena was killed, I sold the property we owned together. I couldn't bear the thought of living on that land without her. I couldn't bear a lot of things for a while.
Lots of people asked me to write our story after Selena passed. I always said no. My feelings were too private. When we lose people who are precious to us, we all have to grieve in our own ways. My way was to keep my memories to myself. It was an automatic response for me to put a lid on my emotions after I lost Selena, because the feelings were so strong. I kept pushing my grief under the surface as I tried hard to continue what was left of my life.
I didn't want to think about Selena at all, because the sudden loss of everything we had worked for and believed in hurt too much. I thought about her anyway, of course. Every day, things would just enter my mind, uninvited. I'd hear one of Selena's songs on the radio, or see a story about her on TV, and the pain would surface again, sharp as a needle pricking the palm of your hand "People kept asking me questions about her, too. They wanted to know why her father objected to me so strongly that Selena and I had to see each other secretly until finally, out of desperation, we eloped. They wanted to know whether Selena—who spoke regularly to schoolchildren about the importance of staying in school and staying off drugs—was as good and honest and generous as she acted in public—or was she just a really good actress? Did Selena have a dark secret? Was she murdered out of envy? Was her death the result of a drug deal gone wrong? Was she having a love affair? Was our marriage over?
I didn't care about setting the record straight at that point. I didn't answer any questions by the "media or Selena's fans. I was too busy desperately trying to wall off that part of my life completely. I couldn't share my memories of Selena because that would mean accepting her death. I grieved in private and survived the loss by staying close to my family and continuing to play music. I even started a band and won my own Grammy for a Latin rock album called Resurrection, which featured songs that Selena inspired me to write after she was long gone."

"Recently, though, I have begun to realize that, by burying everything, I've actually been living my life with blinders on, just putting one foot in front of the other without really moving forward at all. I started wondering if maybe I needed to remember everything after all, and if writing a book could help me finally come to terms with losing Selena.
Not long after I started having those thoughts, I got a phone call from my good friend Carlos. He was one of the few people I told about being in love with Selena back when she and I had to be so secretive about our relationship. It was a strange phone call at first. Carlos wasn't saying much, even though he was the one who'd called me. Finally I mentioned that I was thinking about writing a book.
"Man, that's so weird," Carlos said.
"Why? What's going on?" I asked.
"I had a dream about Selena last night. That's why I called you," he told me. "I was doing this show with my band in the dream and she came backstage. She was smiling, and she gave me a hug."

"That all sounds good," I said.
"Yeah, but the strange part is that at first I couldn't get any words out in the dream to talk to her," Carlos said. "Then Selena asked me how you "were doing and I lost it. I told her you've been having a really hard time lately."
"Then what did she say?" I was picturing all of this just like it was happening in front of me.
"Selena gave me this big hug," Carlos said. "She told me not to worry about you. 'I got him,' she said, just like that."
I was quiet for a minute, feeling Selena close to me. Then I said, "I think it's time I wrote that book."

"Yeah," he said. "Selena would want you to do it."

"So here it is: the story of my life with Selena. She deserves to be remembered not only for her beautiful voice and talent as an entertainer, but as a real woman who loved the ordinary everyday things, like walking barefoot in the evening to feel the warmth of the sidewalk on her skin.
Selena loved as hard as she lived. We loved her in return—her family, her friends, her fans, and me, her husband, who felt like the luckiest man alive every time Selena said my name. This book is for her."