Let me tell you a story…
Our story actually began in 1978 when we attended the same junior college in Batavia NY, just outside of Buffalo.
We dated there casually for about 18 months before she went off to one university and I went off to another. Time and tide conspired and we completely lost track of each other.
Twenty two years had gone by. I had been married and divorced twice by the fall of 2001. I had two small children by my second marriage and shared custody. I was trying to figure out how to be a good father as a single parent. In the two years since my split I had a couple attempts at relationships that didn’t work out. I had come to believe that I would never fall in love again. I actually believed that I was biologically incapable of feeling love any more.
Out of the blue I received an email. Brenda had received one of those Classmates.com emails and saw my name listed in there. On a whim she did a Google search on my name and discovered, to her surprise, my personal blog. She was even more amazed when she read an entry about a concert I had recently attended near where she lived. We had both grown up in western NY State and without knowing we had lived 30 miles apart from each other, in Northern Virginia, for the last 13 years. Our foot prints must have crossed thousands of times.
Brenda had recently split up with her husband. I was also free. We decided to have lunch one Saturday. The lunch extended to talking all afternoon, to dinner and a movie, and much more conversation.
Soon after I started dating Brenda I discovered I was capable of falling in love. That Valentine’s Day I had 22 long stem roses delivered to her at work. One for every Valentine’s Day I had missed in between. All those years we were apart and never realized we were meant to be together.
Later that same year, Brenda and I had been dating about 11 months. We were 42 years old. She never had any children so she quickly fell in love with mine. And they loved her.
That September Brenda was really enjoying planning my son’s 5th birthday party. It was a dinosaur theme. Decorations and cake and party games for the kids. Big fun.
The night before the party her father had a heart attack and was scheduled for emergency surgery. She climbed in the car immediately and drove the 8 hours to see him before he might die. It was awful for her.
She missed the party that she was so looking forward to. Her father came through the surgery and was on the mend from a quadruple bypass. She ended up staying for a week.
The night of the party my thoughts were with her. We talked on the phone, her dad was fine, she was glad she went but at the same time she regretting missing my son’s Birthday. So I wrote her a letter, long hand, telling her all about it in detail. It was a love letter really. The next day when her father had stabilized we talked more on the phone. The kids missed her as much as I did so I wrote her another letter, simply telling her about my day and how much I loved her.
I really enjoyed writing them.
I was going to give them to her when she returned but I was enjoying it so much I went and bought a blank book. I continued to write them. Every night she was away I wrote her another love letter. Simple, heartfelt and true. Night after night that she was not in my arms, I wrote to her telling her how much I missed her. I wrote to her how much she meant to me.
For an entire year.
We were only able to see each other on weekends then. The book filled rapidly. It ended up detailing an eventful year. The Iraq war began, the DC sniper killed someone 300 yards from my front door. It even contained my feelings when she had a health scare, spending three days in the hospital after scary surgery, even my fear poured on to those pages.
I fell deeper in love with her. It was a map of that journey.
I gave her this book on her birthday. She was incredulous. She cried. It was then I earned my title as the most romantic man ever.
I never stopped.
I presented volume 2, as a gift, on our wedding day two years later. Volume 3 is a work in progress. It is filling slower because we are rarely apart. I make sure to tell her how I feel when she is in my arms every night. I don’t keep the book a secret any longer. She eagerly digs the book out of my luggage after a business trip to find the new pages.
It’s a reminder for me of what’s important. It reminds me how I felt when I was falling in Love with her.
I opened to a random page today and read, “I Love you more today than yesterday. I can’t wait for tomorrow.” I still sign letters and notes and emails, “MTTY.”
It still makes her cry sometimes.
It is my goal to keep my title for life…
My friend Marty emailed this story to me. This story is about him and his wife, Brenda. I found it to be one of the most beautiful love stories anyone has ever shared with me. And I was so touched that he would share it with me. Thank you, Marty & Brenda, for letting me share it with everyone else. I believe that everyone should know that true love, and true romance, really do exist. You both are an inspiration to us all.
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