He scrolled down his laptop through the faces on the dating site. Plenty of pretty ladies caught his eye, but he had learned a long time ago that the real beauty of a woman lies within her soul and not on her face covered by a mask of makeup.

A long time ago to him was an entirely different existence. He believed he had lived a past life, one born into uncertainty, mired in mayhem that ended with a bullet he took to the chest from an enemy soldier. And yet, his body buried in a battlefield had become flesh and blood again inside the mind of his life he was living now.

Before going off to war, he had given Rebecca a letter. “If I do not return,” he wrote, “I promise that I will find you in another lifetime so we can finish writing our love story.”

He took his eyes off the dating site and glanced at the calendar pinned to the kitchen pegboard. Dec. 18th — a week away from yet another Christmas. Back to the screen, he jumped to Safari and a song began to play and as he listened to the singer expound the lyrics, he leaned back in his chair.

“When your heart is heavy like a stone from carrying its load or when the shadows are closing in on you like a hand around your throat, I will shine the light.”

The song provoked him to get up and turn on the lights to his table top Christmas tree, one that looked as tired as he felt for the moment. He was 67 years old and tired about everything — tired of his Christmases disappearing one by one from calendars like snowflakes melting upon the bare ground. Tired of staring at a future filled with lonely tomorrows. Tired of all the yesterdays that had held so much promise for him and Rebecca until their love story had been left unfinished on one hot Gettysburg afternoon.

He decided to go outside into the cold winter evening and take a walk. His mobility, declining from years of back problems, was about to be “going, going gone” as Mel Allen used to say when he called New York Yankee home runs. He stepped to the corner and he saw a large banner of the Holy Family pictured inside a manger hung upon a garage door. He stopped to gaze upon its intricate details in the fading twilight.

Suddenly, holiday lights were turned on in the front yard, illuminating Baby Jesus in his crib. His thoughts returned to Rebecca and he remembered that the light seemed to follow her like a shadow drenched in gold. Together, summer afternoons were spent kicking their legs back and forth from a limb high upon a big old oak tree that stood before a wheat field. Her eyes, twinkling like the bright white lights on his Christmas tree, painted a beautiful picture in his mind.

Around the block he walked until the cold night air sent him back into his home. The little star on top of his little tree had gone dark. He poked around in the drawer for some new batteries but found none.

On the kitchen table sat his laptop that he had forgotten to close. Forgetting things was part of his daily life now. Just yesterday, he put a bag full of garbage in the trunk of his car to throw into the dumpster, which was no more than a football field away from his front door. He did some errands and bought some groceries. When he opened the trunk, the bag of garbage was still there.

As he went to close his laptop from the dating site, a face he had never seen was displayed on the screen. Something told him to check out her profile. She was 62 and lived in a town about 40 minutes from him. Then, reading her next words nearly buckled his knees.

“I’m looking for an old soul from a century and a half ago,” she wrote. “I remember a love letter I had written that has restored my memory to the girl I was back then. I know this sounds crazy, but the perfect Christmas gift for me would be the man who never got to read my letter. He went to war and never returned. The words, you see, that I had written to him from a different lifetime so long ago, say, ‘If I cannot have you for the rest of this lifetime, I will wait 1,000 more years until we can be together again.’ ”

At the bottom of her profile, she wrote, “We still have time to complete writing our love story. I know you’re out there somewhere. I have tried to find you for too many years, but I will never give up even if it takes me until my last breath.”

With a whirlwind of emotion, he staggered outside without his coat to return to the garage banner with the Holy Family now in full illumination.

“Thank you!” he shouted. He put his hands together. His prayer had been answered. Nearly out of breath, he got back to his house and the little star on his little tree somehow was lit again.

He replied to her email and right away her phone contact appeared. With anxious anticipation, his trembling fingers tapped the numbers.

“Merry Christmas,” she said with a bustle of joy in her voice. “Where have you been for the past 162 years?”

“I’ve been looking for you in the dark,” he replied, “and tonight, I found you in the light.”

He took her the next night to see the banner on the garage door. Although the years had brought lines and creases to her face, her eyes still sparkled with the youth of their yesterdays, and as she gazed at the Christmas scene before her, she smiled that familiar smile and he knew that she understood.

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com