No More Anniversaries

Tuesday, March 21, will be the first anniversary of our marriage since Eva went to Heaven. During the past eleven months, I have experienced many different emotions. I have written several stories about different activities and events during our married life. Most of those stories were about happy times we shared because those are what I want to focus on and keep fresh in my memories. When I set down to write about what would have been our 59^th anniversary, I thought about several different things, trying to describe the highs and the lows during this period.

I turned on the TV to provide some background noise as I tried to decide where to begin writing and started watching a movie called “What If”. I have told many people that I don’t do “what ifs” because we are a sum of all our decisions and events during our life. However, the movie prompted me to think about “what ifs” in a different way. Shortly after Eva’s celebration of life, I wrote that God had a better plan. He had a better plan for how I would say goodbye to Eva and for my life. I have tried to explain that I believe that God had selected Eva to be in my life even when I had not even considered that possibility.

While watching the movie, I thought about my senior year in high school when I was in a serious relationship with someone then and later with someone else. I cannot know how my life would have played out if either of those relationships had not ended; however, what I do know is that Eva’s love of God was the magnet that pulled me closer to God. That changed everything that occurred throughout the rest of my life. I will not say she was a better person than others, but I know she helped me become a better person.

I thought about different decisions I made in the business world where I could have made more money by accepting some options that I passed on because of my faith. “What Ifs” can drive you crazy if you go down that road, but what it did for me today was to give me comfort that God used Eva throughout my life to help me make better decisions. Some of those decisions she did not even know about, but I knew how she would feel about them. I thought about the tough times in our marriage and how easy it could have been to just call it quits. I am so grateful for the life we had together for so many years.

I will have many thoughts on Tuesday, and I expect it will always be a special day in my life. However, I don’t believe we continue to have anniversaries.