Read and review- I know its very, very cheesy but the idea hit me (a little late, Valentine's Day was last week Rhyleigh), but please give me some feedback! I'd love to hear what you've got to say about it.
She knew that visiting hours were long over, and she was meant to be at home tucked away in her bed at the home they had shared for over sixty years. But, knowing what the next day was, she wasn't about to leave her husband.
Bridget Spender, having changed her name to match her husband's almost sixty years earlier, sat by his bedside, watching as his chest rose and fell with every breath. The room was lit up by lamp light, a notebook open in her lap.
She had written many, many things over the course of her life, but what she was trying to write was the hardest thing she had tried yet. Sighing heavily, she picked up her pen again, before starting.
Dear Guy,
They say time's running out for us, Guy, and I don't know what to make of that. It's been slipping away from us for a while now, but only recently I've been letting myself believe it. I've been saying to myself 'don't let go' for over a month now, but today I mean it just that little bit more.
This is our day. I know every couple will claim that, but I've spent the last sixty five Valentine's Days with you, and I really want one more.
Our first Valentine's Day together, we weren't together. We were sharing the big boarding house on the beach, still getting to know each other while eating red velvet cake and taking bets on how long it would take Cassie and Adam to get together. We spent the unusually cold night in the lounge room, watching movies, laughing and eating popcorn.
That night, when you squeezed my hand gently, I knew you were more than my best friend. I didn't know what you were, exactly, but I knew you were my best friend.
You wore me down, Guy. That year, you changed me. Instead of solely focusing on training and school, what I had gone to Sydney to do, you managed to change me. You wore me down and found out all my little quirks without me even knowing.
Our second Valentine's Day, you turned up at my dorm, declaring that no one should have to spend Valentine's Day alone.
"Bridget Sanchez! Happy Valentine's Day! Who spends it alone?"
You always did know how to get through to me (I never liked to admit that to you).
We made it halfway through the third Harry Potter movie (because you, my friend, are a Harry Potter nerd to the end), and I think it was me that fell asleep first? I leaned against your shoulder and the two of us fell asleep in each other's arms that night, on top of the blankets.
I didn't try and pull away, when I woke up. I stayed as still as I could and watched you sleep. It was that night that I realised that I was in love with you for the first time, and despite the initial bump in the road, I haven't looked back since.
For our third Valentine's Day together, we weren't together. We'd fought the day before, over the phone, and I was so annoyed that we weren't going to be spending it together. But that afternoon, you drove four and a half hours to see me.
Instead of fancy restaurants like every other couple went to that night, we ate pizza on the beach. And that was better than anything else.
On our sixth Valentine's Day together, you popped the question. At the time, however, I wasn't so thrilled. I was so sure you were breaking up with me!
You'd been acting so weird. You kept sneaking off with your phone (I later found out you had been calling Bec, Cassie and Loren for advice, comfort and reassurance, and Garry, Charley and Adam to calm your nerves), and when I told you I had managed to secure a table at our favourite restaurant, you told me you wanted to stay home and order Chinese food.
That was what really scared me. I remember calling up Bec and crying to her, because I was so happy with where we were, and you were breaking up with me, and I didn't know how I was going to piece it back together. She reassured me, comforted me (all the while knowing your plans) and told me that it was all going to be okay in the end.
I hadn't even thought about a proposal. You had laughed at me, when I admitted it.
I'll never forget what you said to me that night, Guy Spender. When you got down on one knee in the middle of our lounge room, knocking over the bag of prawn chips, with me sitting on the very edge of our lumpy lounge, scared you were breaking up with me.
"A lot of people said that they had no idea how we're together. I can't help but agree with them. You're brainy, the smartest person I know, and I'm just your average Guy. When we met that first day in Solar Blue, I knew I needed you in my life. That first Valentine's Day we spent together eight years ago, watching movies in the Solar Blue house eating Loren's heart shaped red velvet cupcakes, taking bets on how long it would take for Cassie and Adam to get together. I knew I was falling in love with you, as you wiped vanilla frosting off my cheek. And a year later, I knew that without a doubt, you were the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. Now, here I am, eight years after we first met, telling you that I can't live without you. You make me laugh, you've made me cry and good God, you frustrate me, but you make me feel a way I've never felt before. You made me feel something that I didn't think was possible, and I want to feel that way for the rest of my life, because I'm convinced this is what true love feels like".
I cried my way through that speech, barely managing to get out a yes.
Our eighth Valentine's Day we spent together was the one where we got married. Our families came to Blue Water and we stayed in the big boarding house. I was so convinced something was going to go wrong and you were so convinced that I wasn't going to make it to the alter. But, despite everything we had gone through, the day went smoothly, with Bec, Loren and Cassie as my bridesmaids and Garry, Charley and Adam as your groomsmen. It was the most perfect day we could have asked for, and one of my favourite memories.
Our tenth Valentine's Day together was a rough one, to say the least. That was the day I went into labour with Yasmin. The labour was thirteen hours, and I'm pretty sure Bec almost went into labour in the waiting room.
She was seven pounds 3 ounces when she finally screeched her way into the world. You finally broke the death grip on my hand when the doctors said that you could hold her.
She was perfect.
Bright blue eyes and dark little tufts of hair on her head, just like her daddy.
I'll never forget how small she was. You were shocked that anyone could be that tiny. You were so convinced you would screw it up, but I convinced you you wouldn't. You were great. With you as a father, I knew our Yasi would turn out fine in the end.
And she did.
On our twentieth Valentine's Day- Yasi's tenth birthday extravaganza. I'm pretty sure a part of you resents me for that day. The girls and I took her out in the morning for a special breakfast, leaving you at home with Finn and Poppy. That was okay, but the beach birthday extravaganza (where Yasi invited practically the whole population of New South Wales), however, was one that we barely managed to survive.
You've always said Yasi was just like me. In a way, she is. I'm glad, however, that Finn is just like you. Poppy, on the other hand, I don't know at all where we got her from.
Our thirtieth Valentine's Day. The year that the kids shipped us back towards the Sunshine Coast, where we celebrated at our favourite restaurant (I still don't know how Poppy managed to secure that reservation, on the twelfth of February).
That was the longest we had been away from the kids, since Yasmin was born. And although we knew that Yasi, at twenty, could look after seventeen year old Finn and fourteen year old Poppy (hell, Finn and Poppy could look after themselves- Poppy could, at least), we knew that.
By the time that our thirty fourth Valentine's Day rolled around (when Poppy moved to Armidale for university), we had gotten used to the quiet house. We enjoyed that year, the first year we had properly enjoyed it since our ninth. We weren't worrying about the kids, and we went away.
The beach that Garry and Bec drove us to, when we were at Solar Blue. It took Garry fifty five minutes and seventeen wrong turns before we arrived, and it was our little piece of heaven. It was a trek and a half, and therefore only a treat for us, but I still remember what you said to me, when we were sixteen.
"Bridget Sanchez, I think we've found heaven on earth".
You repeated those words to me on our thirty fourth Valentine's Day, changing the Sanchez (the name that feels foreign on my tongue, because I've been Bridget Spender for so long), and I laughed and cried and we remembered.
Our forty third Valentine's Day, which we spent at the beach again, was interrupted by a phone call from Finn, telling us that we had officially become grandparents. Allison Danielle Spender, sharing a birthday with Aunty Yasi.
Thirteen years to the day, our beach escape was interrupted again, when Poppy gave birth to Nicholas Graeme, and that was the last good Valentine's Day that we had. Even though doctors tell me you can't remember that day, I know you can. It was the day our family stopped growing (for now), and we keep that photo by our besides.
Yasi and Tom (Bec and Garry's son, because you were so convinced that we conspired to get pregnant at the same time, just to set them up when they were older) are standing to our right, and Poppy and Aiden are to our left. Finn and Rebecca stand over us, Daniel and Jake towering over everyone, Callum only slightly shorter. Aubrey and Alli sat at our feet, joined at the hip, more like sisters than cousins. Sasha sat in my lap and you cradled Nicholas, the nurse taking the photos for us.
Valentine's Days after that weren't as bright. You were there, but not fully. You knew it was our anniversary and you knew it was Valentine's Day, but you didn't fully realise the significance February fourteenth had to us. I loved every minute I spent with you, and, to their credit, the group from Solar Blue always made sure I was okay as well.
I knew we always said we'd die in our own bed some night, old and grey and happy, but it didn't turn out that way. Please don't hold this against me, Guy. The kids, and the group from Solar Blue all offered to help, but I just couldn't. I couldn't ask them to put their lives on hold.
I'm here with you all day. You don't always know I'm here, but you know me. It's those times that are worth it. I see the smile on your face, the smile I fell in love with that very first day at Blue Water Beach sixty five years ago. I see the smile on your face and suddenly it's like we're lying in the Solar Blue lounge room, battling it out on Mario Kart and falling in love with each other.
I'm so glad we stopped pretending. I'm so glad we got to spend these last sixty five years together. Sometimes, I get so mad thinking of how unfair it is that you're going to go before me. I know that it seems childish and selfish of me, but it's not fair that sixty five years if all I'm going to get. A lifetime is meant to be a lifetime and this just doesn't seem like one.
We've lived the best sixty five years we could and I don't regret a single second I spent with you. Ups, downs and all the rest in between. Each one of them was perfect. Each memory will stay with me forever, even though they haven't stayed with you.
You may not stay on this earth forever, Guy, and that's not our fault. Alzheimer's sucks and I hate it with a passion I didn't even know I had. You'll stay with me, though, until we're reunited again. You will live on forever, Guy Spender, in my heart, in our children's and grandchildren's, and all the people that you've touched over the years.
Happy Valentine's Day Guy.
Eternally yours,
Bridget
Folding the letter up and placing it on her husband's beside, resting upon the photo taken the day their youngest grandson was born, she capped her pen and crawled into the bed beside him. Guy, as if sensing his wife's presence beside him, shifted and curled an arm around her. She settled into his side like she had done that first Valentine's Day sixty five years ago, as they settled onto the lounge in the Solar Blue lounge room.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Guy", she whispered, before closing her eyes with a smile on her face. Guy smiled in his sleep, holding her a little tighter.
Bridget didn't have to spend Valentine's Day without Guy. Guy didn't have to spend Valentine's Day without Bridget. Their eyes closed for the last time, for the long sleep, smiles etched on their faces. They were old and grey and happy, passing away in their sleep. It might not have been in their own bed like Guy had wanted, but they were together, and that was all that they had wanted.
The love they shared had lasted sixty five Valentine's Days, but the pair had an eternity to spend together.