28 Years and Counting....

On a very warm afternoon of June 15, 1985 I married a certain young lady by the name of Sandi in a small church in a suburb of Boston. We were married in the same church her parents were married in years before. I wore a rented tux that was way too big in the waist. A highlight of the ceremony was that every time I moved, especially to kneel, a pin would fly free.

There were times when you literally could hear a pin hit something.

Soon, people in the first couple of rows learned to duck every time I knelt. As the ceremony wound down and I tried to not sound like a quivering idiot every time I spoke, little did we know that we were minutes away from taking a ride in a limo with  no air conditioning driven by a man who would run at least three red lights and nearly sideswipe a half a dozen cars in his attempt to get us to the reception hall. We had no idea it was really possible to make a limo go sideways through an intersection when one was not on a movie set.

It is. The driver did it twice. The second time he did it, he pulled off the hat trick by sending us both off the seat and to the floor.

We also didn't know that the next morning we would wake up to 28 degrees and snow and sleet falling on the city of Boston, Massachusetts. If we had, we might have had more clothing packed than lightweight shorts and shirts and a couple of pairs of jeans.

When we said our vows 28 years ago we had no idea that it was going to be, for the most part, a lot of whole lot of poorer and way too much sickness. We had no idea. What we thought our lives together would be like was very far from the reality that our lives have become. Especially since March of 2010 when I got sick with whatever this is I have and then Sandi's cardiac issues, strokes, and cancer battles. This was not the reality we had planned for and expected on any level.

But, life is what it is and while I would change a lot of things in my past, I would not change marrying Sandi. And I am very thankful and grateful that she is still here with me 28 years and counting later.

Happy Anniversary, Sandi.