My first love had died. He was in a car crash when Cindy was a baby. I will never forget trying to rock her to sleep while she was wailing at the top of her lungs. A breaking news report flashed across the screen with the news of a highway pile-up with one man already pronounced dead. I didn't think anything of it other than the usual, "How terrible." Then came the phone call I never thought I would get. It was my turn to cry as my baby girl had soothed herself to sleep. That's all I remember of that day; I was so in a daze, my survival mode set in a gear so hard that I wasn't even in my own head. I couldn't even tell you about his funeral except that Mike and Mary Brady stopped by.
Mary Brady was a co-worker of mine. We worked as secretaries for the same company. She was full-time; I was part-time. I remember how she came to greet in me in the mourning line and gave her condolences to me.
"I can't imagine what you're going through," she quietly told me at the funeral reception.
"I hope you never have to," I remember looking at Mike when I said that.
"I've been praying every night that someone watches over Mike if anything should happen to me."
"I don't think anything bad's going to happen."
"Oh, listen to me. I'm so sorry, hon," she then said wrapping her arms around me.
"You're okay, Mary," I told her, hugging her back. It would be one of the last times I would hug her. She died in her sleep just a few months later. Just like that, she was gone and everytime I thought about what she had said to me at the funeral reception, I would get the chills. It was almost like she knew and just had to tell somebody. I felt horrible for Mike and their three sons. I have three girls of my own and our grieving process was something that was forever unfolding. They were in for a long ride and I knew it.
Our love story started with a simple dinner at a restaurant. The next time I invited him over to our house for dinner. I will never forget the way he interacted so dearly with my girls. They loved him right off the bat. Baby Cindy was so comfortable with him that she let him rock her to sleep. I marveled at that; Cindy always fussed whenever her father tried to rock her to sleep. I always knew she loved her father very much but she was always peculiar about bedtime.
The next time was over at his house. I met Alice and thought she was one of the most adorable people I had ever met. She was so funny and so charming, who wouldn't love her? Then I met his boys and my heart melted. I had always wanted a son of my own and the little boys in front of me were so precious, I would have adopted them right there. Bobby and Peter were the most loving little boys and were taking turns crawling in my lap throughout the night. Greg liked me okay, but he was more on the independent side. He did hug me goodbye when I left.
That was the way our friendship began. Of course that turned into a courtship and then an engagement. We had just started having both of our families over for dinner at each other's houses when Mike told me he had dropped something. Then he breezed over to my side of his dining room table and pulled out a box. He then opened it up and showed me this beautiful diamond ring. I began to cry as I said, "Yes" and he slipped the ring on my finger. The kids cried with happiness as we kissed each other. Our dessert that evening was a big sheet cake made by Alice that said, "She said 'Yes!'" written on it.
That was a year ago. Now here I am in my old bedroom at my parent's house waiting for my new life to begin...