This is entitled “Our Story” because it happened to both of us. My darling husband was the patient and I was the caregiver. In the end, he died and I believe he rejoices with the saints as I mourn and try to think of a new beginning. This is Our Story…
My husband Bob and I met late in life. We both had had long marriages and had our trust betrayed and both of us had said “never again”. My mother always said “never say never”. Mother was right. We met on the internet in February of 2001 and shared our profiles and photos. We began to share regular emails and some phone calls. Neither of us thought too much about a real relationship since we lived in different cities. He was in Austin Texas and I was in Dallas, a safe 200 mile distance. For six months we enjoyed each others emails and phone calls. He seemed a total gentleman and he thought I was a true Texas lady. Finally, early in July we planned a lunch date in Dallas. The truth was that by this time each of us honestly felt we knew the other. One date lead to another and finally he was driving to Dallas every weekend. He said he “knew” the first time he saw my smile that I was what he had conjured up in his mind at the age of 15 when he thought about what his wife and what his life would be like as an adult. I was more skeptical, I kept looking for a crack in his armor but couldn’t find one. He opened car doors for me, walked on the correct side of me, listened when I spoke, called when he said he would call and showed up everytime at the appointed hour. I mentioned to him that he really was an officer and a gentleman. His reply was “by order of Congress Mam”. You see, he was a retired Army Colonel. Since I had absolutely no knowledge of the military, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. Friends told me to be wary, that he would be very controlling and demanding. When I shared with my grown son that I was dating a retired Colonel, he wanted to know if he was a “bird” Colonel. I thought a minute and said “I’ll have to get back to you on that”. The very next visit, over dinner I ask Bob if he was a “bird” Colonel and he grinned and replied that as a matter of fact he was. My next question was “What’s a bird Colonel?” He looked at me adoringly and laughed so hard I thought he would choke. I was on a roll so I thought I might as well get the question of control and demanding out of the way too, so I said “you seem way to sweet to be a Colonel”, he smiled, kissed me on the cheek and whispered in my ear “I don’t treat the troops the same way I do you”. Yikes, I was hooked.
Over the next weeks, Bob would drive in to Dallas on Friday’s and call me from the tollway to let me know he was almost there. I would have martinis, so cold it would hurt your teeth, ready when he arrived. We had wonderful dinners out on Friday nights and on Saturday evenings we usually prepared something to eat in, always with music in the background, dancing to our favorites in my tiny kitchen. We had wonderful wines and always champagne. Early on, he would leave to go home on Sunday mornings but pretty soon he was coming in on Thursdays and staying until Tuesdays. It was a perfectly wonderful romance and courtship. We both felt so comfortable with the other and I mean that in the best possible way. Finally in early September, while we were dancing to Patsy Cline’s True Love he told me that he loved me and I responded in kind. I must tell you that Bob had very large and very dark brown eyes and they looked deeply into mine and when he said the words “I love you” I am sure he saw my soul. It took my breath away then and when I think about it now, I can see us dancing. I can feel his hand in the small of my back and still see those eyes and it takes my breath away even today. For the rest of our time together when the right song was playing, Bob would take my hand and we would dance. It didn’t really matter where we were. One time it was in an antique shop where he purchased two antique Waterford champagne glasses for me, once it was walking down the street in Wimberley Texas, many times it was in restaurants and so very very often in our kitchen. When Bob and I looked at each other, the rest of the world disappeared and we were lost in the moment. I was asked once if I realized how his face lit up when I entered a room. I knew that it did and he knew that mine did the same. Within days of declaring our love to each other he was talking about “when we’re married”. I finally said “you keep talking about when we’re married, but you’ve never really asked me…he immediately took my hand and said “will you marry me?”. Yes, yes, yes a thousand times yes!
Our Story-Part Two
We set our wedding date for March on Texas Independence Day. We both floated on air. Then the towers fell and the Pentagon was struck and the plane went down in Pennsylvania. I was terrified and Bob immediately came to Dallas to be with me. Because of his military experience and his knowledge of the middle east, I slowly came to understand what had happened and felt more secure. The world changed and so did we. We began to think March was an awfully long way off in such uncertain times.
Since Bob was the National Officer for Region 5 of the Military Order of the Purple Heart he held the region meeting in Austin for the first week in October and invited me to come down. I expected the invitation and quickly packed, made arrangements for being off work and left for Austin. What I didn’t expect was what happened next… During the meeting, Bob asked me to come forward and he introduced me to the crowd and then he dropped to one knee and asked me in front of God and the whole group if I would do him the honor of being his wife! I cried, and laughed all at the same time. What a magnificent and romantic thing to do. Again, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!.
Originally we wanted a small wedding, just our children, my parents, and my sister but suddenly it had grown to over 100 people. I was trying to plan a wedding and reception in Austin and living in Dallas. I was on the phone with the Austin Club deciding on the menu when I became overwhelmed. I called Bob and he said “I’ll come to Dallas this afternoon”. It was Wednesday and he did come on up. When he arrived he said “I think we should move up the date of the wedding”. I replied, “ok to what date”? “Monday”, he said. Monday! We were planning a trip to Mexico on Tuesday for a week and he thought we might as well elope and make the trip our honeymoon. So, on Thursday we got a marriage license, on Friday we drove to Austin and on Monday, October 22, 2001 we were married by a Justice of the Peace with our good friends Ernie and Virginia by our side. On Tuesday, we left for Mexico and 8 glorious days. Of our five children only 2 knew we were eloping. The night before we left Austin, Bob’s number two son called to see if his Day would like to go hunting the next day and Bob told him “no, I can’t, I’m leaving for Mexico tomorrow”. Of course his son, John, wanted to know if it was business or pleasure and Bob replied, “pleasure, it’s a honeymoon.” John and I had never met, so I can only imagine what he was thinking. I had only met one of Bob’s four children, his daughter Lori and we liked each other immediately and Bob said “if you get passed her, you’ve got it made.” No pressure there!
The honeymoon was outstanding and we both hated to see it end. Normally for both of us, five days is max to be away from home and still be happy, but this was different. We could have stayed another 8 days.
Back home we had to take care of business. Bob had business to see about and of course his Purple Heart work to attend to. I had to resign my posisition at the Hockaday School and get my things packed up and ready to move. My condo had sold while we were on our honeymoon so that worked out beautifully. We also had planned to drive to Denver to spend Thanksgiving with my son and daugher-in-law, Todd and Laurie. We were separated by 200 miles and three weeks. Finally it was over and we were driving to Denver. We had a wonderful time, but I became ill and ended up the emergency room. I don’t remember the drive home, and poor Bob had to do all the driving. Once home, he packed up what was left of my stuff and we ordered the truck. December 1, the truck is packed and Bob is at the wheel and I am in the car which is also packed to the brim. I had Dallas in my rear-view mirror and Austin in my headlights. Whooohooo!
Bob and I communicatyed the whole way by cell phone. He called me once and told me to pull over at the next exit (the rest stop), he needed to rest. I dutifully pulled over and turned into what I thought was the rest stop, and immediately thought it odd that there were no lights on and several camper-trucks. Bob was right behind me and as soon as I stopped, he jumped out and came to my car and said, this isn’t a rest stop, turn around and let’s go back out. By that time, several men emerged and was talking to Bob and I was feeling a little uncomfortable with the situation when I saw Bob coming back to my car. He said, “this is a hangout for gay men”, let’s get out of here…we did. I would forever take flak for turning at the wrong place, but he did say “the next exit”. He had a hard time getting the truck turned around in such a small place and finally some of the nice men helped guide him. We were back on the road again.
We finally hit Austin and drove past Darrel K. Royal Memorial Stadium where a game was underway and I could not have been happier. Wow. I was really in Austin!
Part 3
It had started to rain just a bit as we drove into Austin and we decided not to unload the truck until the next morning. It was pouring rain the next morning and continued to rain for the next two weeks. I jokingly told my new husband that he neglected to tell me that the sun didn’t shine in Austin Texas.
I spent the next weeks trying to combine two households into one. My husband Bob, was quite frankly a pack rat. He kept everything. The garage was already full of boxes stacked from wall to wall and floor to ceiling. It was overwhelming at best. Unpacking boxes was difficult since there was no place to set the box or the contents. When I questioned him about the contents of all his boxes, his reply was simple. I might need it all someday. I later learned that he had boxes from the early 1980’s that he had not opened since they were packed. He had objects from his travels around the world and paper and files from the day he enlisted in the Army. I was anxious to see a lot of it since it was a window into my husbands past. It would take several years to go through everything and it wasn’t until his death that I finally got through all of it. I understood why he kept so much “stuff”. He lost his father when he was but six months old. A year later he lost his only sibling an older brother and two years later he lost his mother when she had to go away to a sanitarium for tuberculosis. He was sent to live with his grandparents and grew up feeling he had no real history. Once he was grown, he was determined to keep everything so there would be a history of his existence. Who could argue with that logic? Not me, I was too much in love and had too much respect for him.
I finally got all of our “stuff” combined and somewhat organized and we enjoyed our home. It was small and eventually, I set about remodeling it and doing away with things we could part with in an effort to gain more space. Our real goal was to sell the house and purchare a newer, larger one that would be “ours”. We held garage sales and gave away all manner of things. It became a joke to Bob’s children to see what Dad was going to try and off-load on them at the next visit.