Looking back

If Tom had lived until tomorrow, we would have celebrated our 41st anniversary. In some ways, it has been a very long time and in others, it has gone as quickly as the mist of a spray.

It was raining that night. Tom forgot to go by the florist and pick up my bouquet, so he had to call all over the area to find a florist still open and got me an orchid. It died within 3 days, before we came back from our honeymoon. We had gotten blue and white polka dotted sheets as one of our wedding presents and my mother had put them on our bed when she had left our apartment earlier in the day of our return. Tom went back to school and I went back to work.

We moved into an extremely large trailer park close to his school and I was working for a publishing company in downtown Nashville, TN. We worked; he went to school; we got to know each other better and it was great; for a while. It was his senior year and he wanted to leave Nashville to live in the mtns. I had lived in the mtns all my life. I loved Nashville. I had a great job. I didn't want to leave, but he applied for jobs all over NC, GA and FL and he was hired to teach band and chorus in a small-town high school in Jasper, GA. Some time during all of this "decision" making, I found out I was pregnant.

Life happened and then he died. And, now I'm remarried and live in "O-town" and work in a very magical place. I'm retired from teaching and my recent husband just went through cancer surgery.

There you have it. Except in 1972 while living in GA, at the height of some of the "most hostile days of my first marriage" I found out I was pregnant with our second son. I was remembering that today when we had lunch together. He is such a joy. He is his father's child with "smatterings" of me in him. I like to think he has the best traits from both of us. And, if the truth were told, I am probably closer to him than any other person on this earth. He knows me! And, he still loves me. That was soooo his father. How he turned out so well is only by the Grace of God. And I am so proud of him.

One day he will have to make decisions for my care. One day he may have to sign DNR papers for me. Or, one day, he may have to take care of the "arrangements" for this earthly body I have. I know I am in good hands with him.

God has been so good to me to allow me to have such wonderful men in my life. I am extremely blessed.