Though my life experiences have been both joyful and challenging, I can honestly say that I have had a great life. When deep love entered my life through my husband, Jim, I became a new person. I was changed forever.
My husband and I were married for over forty-three years. We met in high school through one of our mutual friends that he happened to be dating at the time.
He was two years older than me so we spent very little time in school together. When he graduated and went off to the Naval Academy, we saw each other occasionally when he would come home to go to the church our families attended. Our conversations were usually the same. We brought each other up to speed about our lives. I would ask about his girlfriend and he would ask about my life.
Our interaction was usually quite brief until one Sunday. I noticed that Jim looked particularly handsome that day. He always had a warm smile but this week was different. When I asked about our mutual friend, he told me they had broken up and suddenly, I saw him through different eyes. He was a brilliant and very handsome man and I wondered about the possibilities.
He obviously was thinking the same and asked me to ride out to the reservoir with him to wax his new car. It was a beautiful day and his bright red 240Z captured my eye, so I agreed.
We dated for a few months after that. He would drive up from the Naval Academy, pick me up, then he would drive us to Washington DC for dinner at a special restaurant and we’d go to the theatre. It was so much fun. By this time, I was in college, and it was an experience that most college students could not even imagine to be doing and he was such a great guy.
Though I totally enjoyed his company, after a while, it became obvious that he was far more serious about me than I him so I decided that it was time for our relationship to come to an end. Years later, Jim would laugh when I would tell this story and he would deny my version but it really was true. He was crazy about me.
Though I would see his family at church, I really didn’t think too much about him until one year later. Jim had graduated from the Naval Academy by now and was stationed on the west coast. This particular day, I felt compelled to contact him, so I immediately obtained his address from his mother and wrote him a letter. There was only “snail” mail then. There was no internet. The day after I mailed the letter to him, I received a large photo of the Golden Gate Bridge with an invitation he had written on the back to accompany him to a wedding while he was home over Christmas. Our letters had passed in the mail. We were thinking about each other at the very same time.
We got together over that Christmas…and the rest is history. We were engaged four months later and because I was still in college, we did not marry until two and a half years later. We had a beautiful wedding and I followed him to a Naval Base in Charleston, South Carolina.
Neither one of us ever expected to land up together. We were different as night and day. He was a scholar athlete and I was a music theatre kind of gal, but, we trusted God to lead us through life and we spent forty-three beautiful years together.
Jim has been gone for over a year now and I miss our life together so much. But, I go forward to continue his sweet legacy of love in our family and with dear friends.
I do not know what the future holds for me. I hope that one day, I will be surprised by love once again… because love, is the sweetest gift we can ever be given.
I know that many of you understand the loss of a partner, a spouse. Whether you are divorced or your spouse has died, as mine did, the loss is real and very painful. I pray that God would open your eyes to see the love around you. Love your families and friends well.
And one day, I pray that you would be surprised by love.
Warmly,
Carol Marchant Gibbs
Stories Changing Lives