Like a Rock

Twenty years ago tonight I slept in my newly built house with so many of my relatives that most of them slept on the floor.  Several more were sleeping at my parents' home getting ready for the next day's events.

It would be the last night I spent the house that I had only moved into eight months prior. 

I don't recall any great details of that next morning.  Only getting dressed at the church, a few tears, my father walking me down the aisle.  I'm pretty sure THIS time he was happy to be escorting me to my new life with Bob.  I remember standing around the corner when dad pointed out that Bob could see me.  I ducked back around.  And even though it was not a Catholic church, the organist played Ave Maria while we waited.  It struck a chord in my long-ago Catholic roots.

I remember it being a very short but very sweet wedding.  And one where I had no doubt I was walking into my future. 

The road between here and there had such unexpected turns.  Less than a year later, my father lay dying of liver cancer.  I spent our second anniversary at the funeral of what had once been my favorite aunt, the one I was named after. 

Yes there have been terrific heartaches and yet wonderful highs.  The good Lord has blessed us with wonderful grandbabies and sweet memories.  We have great families who can lift our spirits and sweet friends that are more like family.

Last year we had plans to go away on a great trip for our 20th, but the timing was just not with us.  So tomorrow, I'll head off to work, Bob will take his dad to the VA and we'll just keep on keeping on. 

If someone flipped a switch and I was waking up in my old house, knowing today what I didn't know then.....  Yes, I would do it all over again.  Heartaches and disappointment be damned.  We'll be soon settling into our "twilight" years and the future looks even brighter.

Happy Anniversary Bobby. The next twenty will be even better than the first twenty.

"Twenty years now, where'd they go?  Twenty years.  I don't know.  I sit and I wonder sometimes, where they've gone."