America's North Shore Journal

Today is my fourteenth wedding anniversary. At the age of 40, I married for the first time. I didn’t know what to expect. In reality, I had never given a thought to what being married would be like, children, spending my life with another person.

I met the lovely wife on-line, after joining a listserv that interested me. I was working at a small two year college, and the listserv seemed to have a lot of people on it that worked in education. There were a number of single women that I corresponded with directly. In August 1994, the lovely wife wrote me for the first time.

She was a very engaging person, and we were soon writing many e-mails a day. That graduated to phone calls, and we exchanged videos we made about out lives.

At Thanksgiving, 1994, I flew out to College Station, Texas, to meet her in person for the first time. Before I left, she had accepted my proposal of marriage.

Over the next several months, she visited me twice. The rest of the time was taken up with long phone calls and many, many e-mails.

My brother was to be married on July 14, 1995. We decided to have a small ceremony on July 16, so as not to interfere with his celebration but to take advantage of her being in New York for his wedding.

We were married in the village park by a justice of the peace who was a volunteer firefighter and EMT. My best man was a firefighter. Linda’s maid of honor was a firefighter and EMT. Our reception was at the fire company that I belonged to, and the lovely wife will never forget the parade around the village in all the fire trucks after the beer had been flowing for a while.

She went back to Texas the next day and began closing down her life there. I flew down at the end of July. She sold her house, we packed up her SUV and a rental truck with her stuff and her four cats. The multi day drive back to Alfred was long and tiring but we made it.

Over the next 14 years, we moved twice more, then bought a house. I learned to love our cats and mourn them as they passed over to the Summerlands. We adopted new cats when we could, averaging four, and made room for as many as six when possible.

At the end of 2006 I lost my last full time job. The lovely wife had been struggling with her health for several years and was becoming sicker. In early 2007 she suffered a heart attack and two strokes, beginning a period of trouble that would last over a year. Being unemployed, I could take care of her, and I did as best as I could.

This anniversary sees us doing pretty good. Her Social Security disability came through so she is assured of an income. A legacy allowed us to have some needed work done on the house and gives her a cushion for the future.

The lovely wife’s health is satisfactory for now. I have some issues but can manage them.

It’s been, as I guess it always is, a marriage of ups and downs. Through it all I have come to realize how much I love this woman, how she fills a void in me. I have so much love in my life that the troubles that come with living are easier and more manageable.

I don’t know why I spent 40 years never giving the future a thought. I do know that I could never have imagined a future that would feel this comforting and loving.

So, on to year 15.