A Love Story
Last week marked the end of an incredible love story. My sister’s husband – the love of her life – died of a heart attack – the day before his fifty-eighth birthday.
But the story starts years ago.
53 years ago, today, she was hit by a moving van. At the tender age of six and what was known about traumatic brain injuries back then, it was an accident she couldn’t possibly survive. But survive she did.
Ultimately, she graduated high school, got a job and married her first husband. She’s a firm believer in the marriage commitment and stayed in that marriage until he passed. It was a complicated time but ultimately, we set her up on her own. She had a great apartment across the street from where she worked.
After several years of being on her own, she was ready to date again. Being the protective sister, I am, I scrutinized the dating apps she was looking at.
The first one was one that did financial and criminal checks on all members. She had plenty of first dates but they weren’t leading anywhere. The next one was a Christian based group. Again, lots of first dates. This was eventually bought by a larger group. Even with the larger pool of candidates, she wasn’t getting past a first date. She decided she wanted to try one of the big-name ones. She had two weeks left on the current memberships. We agreed, we’d wait until that ended before switching.
As fate would have it she struck up a friendship with a gentleman during that time. They agreed to meet for a first date. As a result of being confined to a wheelchair due to muscular dystrophy, he couldn’t go pick her up. She made plans to take public transportation to get there. He would hear nothing of it. One date led to another and another. They could only see the purest love in each other, neither ever noticed the other’s limitations. This love continued to flourish and they were married.
He had a thriving accountant practice. She quit her job and took on the role of executive assistant for him.
Unfortunately, muscular dystrophy is a degenerative disease and continued to take it’s toll on him, until last week when we lost him.
My sister sees that he is free of a body that failed him long ago. She misses him terribly but finds comfort knowing he is in heaven with his parents.
We are working towards determining what makes sense for the next chapter of her life. When we were talking the other day, she mentioned that even knowing how it would end she’d gladly do it all again to get those twelve amazing years with him.
Theirs was the kind of love that legacy moments are made of.
