Engaged and Married

*September 11th, 1973
The place: Atlantic City Boardwalk
Those present: Ronald, Maureen, Lera and Russell (myself)
The occasion: Celebrating Ron & Maureen's 13th anniversary
The happening: On my knee, with the ocean at my back, in the moonlight, I asked my high school sweetheart and the most beautiful girl in the world to marry me. She said yes.
I knew for over a year, since seeing her at a friends' wedding and dancing with her at the reception that she was the girl for me. I told my father, “I’m going to marry that girl”. I knew she was a wonderful, loving individual who would be by my side forever. And I had prayed hard that God would make her mine and me hers.

September 14th, 2022 marked the 48th anniversary for Lera and I.
Forty-eight years ago I stood (literally shaking in my boots so bad my best man poked me in the side to make me focus) as my beautiful bride-to-be walked arm-in-arm with her father down the aisle to marry me. I knew it was going to be a day to remember but also a day that would change our lives for ever. I am so glad the vows included the phrase "for better or worse, for richer or poorer.", because I knew having married me, things could go from one to the other rather quickly for her as I was, and am, unpredictable and given to impractical impulses.

We have seen the better, lived through the worst, been rich and poor, and although times have been tough, she has been by my side, holding my hand and sometimes lifting me off the floor, never considering any life but this one she chose. She has lived her vows as a promise to God and me, never breaking, sometimes bending, but always standing firm.

If not for the Spirit of God working in our lives, guiding first her and then me, to Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we never could have made it. And without Lera in my life, I would surely have died a long time ago from wrecklessness and self-abuse.

I wrote to her: Lera, thank you for being my wife, my lover, my comforter, my confidant, and my best friend. You have given me a life worth living. I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow.
She replied: Russell, forty-eight years ago we stood together and said our vows. Through thick and thin we've stood side by side. I thank God for you. Thank you for being my husband. I love you. I pray we have many more together.

Epilogue: Lera passed away July 12th 2023, just two months short of our forty-ninth anniversary. I tried to celebrate it alone but my heart was too broken. It wasn’t the same without her.

July 12th, 2024 is just around the corner. A year since her passing. A year of being a widower. A year of living lonely (but not alone, my daughter and her family are with me). A year that no man or woman should feel the agony of.

Without my daughter Nicole, her husband Tom and my three grandchildren: Tom the 3rd (12), Alexandria (almost 10) and Charlie (5), I would have never survived. A shoutout to my friends who kept me in prayer and my widowed friends who lifted my spirits with advice and kind thoughts.