Part Four: New Hope – to Love Again REALITY EPISODES IN PRINT ~ 61: Chapter 46: From Infatuation to True Love December 14 December 14, 1:45 pm. That is the time Betty left, one year ago. Christmas approaches, with all its traditions, and this year with many changes. A few days ago Gloria and I decorated for the season. Two large boxes of tinsel and bobbles and candles Betty and I have had for years came out of storage. And a couple of Betty’s special Christmassy cross stitch pieces: a welcome with a bear and another with three carolers. This year most of these items did not fit our new decor so I’ve put the best in a box for Tara and the rest for the Tilly. Gloria and I went downtown and picked out all new tree decorations. We needed to make this Christmas “ours” so we have a totally new look in our living room. I kept the seven foot tree, the large Nativity scene, though, and the old fashioned cardboard one. It was identical to the one we had when I was a child. And some of Gloria’s decorations grace the room. I hope that you can understand the “ours” thing. You should be able to grasp the fact that I cannot allow Betty to interfere with my new relationship; she would not want that. The past six months have been a big adjustment since she and I lived in this house for almost twenty years. She was still much more here than I realized until I brought Gloria home; her handiwork remained throughout the house. But now we have mostly new furniture in the living room, and Gloria and I fixed up a main floor room for her “office”, which looks quite nice. She has some of her furniture in our bedroom as well as in her room. This had been the GBoys’ room, which is now moved to Betty’s former basement sewing room, and Tara gets her sewing machine. I took it to the Sewing Centre in Red Deer and had it souped up! Gloria and I, before we married, discussed that fact that because both of us had long and good marriages, we cannot come together without bringing our missing spouses. They will always be part of our lives. We cannot share our stories with each other without reference to them, and we do so often. My Betty and Gloria’s Bob are an integral part of our separate lives and always will be. We sometimes share anecdotes about them, and do that freely. That’s our life together. Gloria has been a wonderful support. Her husband died ten years ago at home with colon and liver cancer. She knows about the first anniversary of a death of a loving spouse. We share our stories and she encourages me. She said recently, “We are creating a new life together and saying good-bye to another.” She also believes that God brought her into my life so soon to help me walk through this first anniversary of Betty’s passing. Life is for the living. Our months together have brought Gloria renewal. She says, “Things that had died inside me are slowly coming alive again.” Together we are experiencing a growing tenderness and affection for each other. The first three months of our relationship were filled with difficulties in adjusting to each other’s values, habits, and idiosyncrasies. We still, occasionally, have to deal with issues. Like they say, we fell in love with a personality but discovered we had married a “Character”! Our strong commitment to our marriage vows, even though they were made before a Dallas Judge, and our initial infatuation (untried love) with each other, kept us together until we are now experiencing a growing depth of love and care and the wonderment of discovery. We have now become best friends, something we did not have time or the space to develop before our marriage, being 2,000 miles apart, and only six days of courting. We love doing things together, whether enjoying a movie, preparing a meal, or shopping for groceries or Christmas presents, whatever. The companionship we both sought has now become a satisfying reality. A few younger folks felt very strongly that I remarried too soon, but I’ve never felt so. Being married too soon means that Betty would be interfering with Gloria’s and my relationship because of my too strong an emotional attachment to Betty. She hasn’t. But I don’t understand, still, how I can still love her so and sometimes seriously miss her while my love for Gloria is steadily growing. Well, I don’t try anymore; love is a matter for the heart. Not the head. Heart stuff sometimes has no logic and cannot be explained. Thank you, Betty, for blessing me for 48 years. Thank you Gloria for filling my aloneness and blessing my final years with a new friendship and companionship. God has richly blessed me with two wonderful women! I am grateful. The next chapters tell Gloria’s and my story, just about exactly as it happened. First, you will read of our ChristianMingle meeting. Then twenty-four hours later we switched to Facebook where we were able to meet each other’s family in pictures of events from the past several years. It is presented here almost word-for-word as it happened. As I have read it recently, over a year since we fell in love, it sounded very much like a couple of teenagers falling in love for the first time. That’s the nature of love; it has never had boundaries for age, or for space in today’s world. Enjoy our love story. We sure did!
Posted on: Sat, 15 Feb 2014 03:36:10 +0000
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