Love’s True Story 1: When Two Lives Become One for 75 Years
Love’s True Story 1:
When two lives become one for 75 years.
Our new falling in love true stories series that will show us all what true love is.
Look for one of these stories the last Monday of every month.
Love’s True Story 1
When two lives become one.
Girl moves to the country and meets farm boy.
Girl falls in love.
This is not Pioneer Woman’s story.
Except that it is practically a genuine pioneer woman.
It’s my mother almost 80 years ago.
It’s 1940. Wartime.
She hasn’t been a country girl very long, but she embraces the life.
Long walks over dirt roads to get to work. To worship. To socialize.
Winter means snow and ice, and her employer often picks her up, and she spends the week at their house.
Not as far to worship and socialize from there.
Skating parties. Fires on the river bank. Handsome young man, just old enough to be drafted.
Then it’s summer.
Baseball games. Family picnics. Both together.
He brings her to the family picnic/baseball game.
Both together for the first time with the family.
The family watches. Smiles. Thinks.
A ten year old nephew sees the young man in the ball field and a fast high hit is coming straight for him.
The young man reaches… grasps… misses.
She yells, “Butterfingers!”
The ten year old wonders why she would call the young man she came with names.
Today,
today…. he understands.
At the girl/woman/wife/mother/grandmother’s funeral
he shares the wonder
and the awed realization
that almost 80 years ago a love was beginning
that would span 9-days-short-of-75-years.
That would last through separation during a war.
Through dry winds and crop failures of the worst, terrible time in history.
That depression. Yes. And through so much more.
Until he is 96 and she has to say good bye
to the love of her life.
She loved him so many more years than she didn’t.
75 years of love. 20 years of not knowing him. 2 years of falling in love. 2 years of waiting to see that love again.
Because she went Home almost 2 years after him.
And their legacy continues in those who remember.
And saw what true love is.
