A Yellow Rose and Love Always

Mom and Dad

 at their Vow Renewal Ceremony 2 years ago on their 50th Wedding Anniversary

Celebrating a Love that spanned decades,

anchoring our family through all the storms of this life.

Today we celebrate Love in all it's Cupid-Heart-Shaped finery.  Valentine's Day.  A day filled with flowers and chocolates, romantic marriage proposals and candy hearts, candlelit dinners and whispered promises.

It's a day meant for two.

Two hearts, two hands, two lives.  Together. 

But today Dad travels this road alone, sitting in a silent chapel, mourning a loss so deep the soul shudders.  The bearing of the grief is formidable.

A trembling hand reaches to touch the curve of her face only to encounter the glass wall.  She smiles out, the yellow rose a reminder of a day not long ago when she held those same hands and repeated vows renewing the promise made 50 years past, promising a love grown wise and deep through those many years.  A love burnished beautiful through the trials and triumphs of life, always together...

That love still anchors us through the storms of this life.  Even through the bitter tempest of pancreatic cancer.  Death stormed the sanctity of their union, but their Love Always promise has held firm while we have walked this valley road.   It is a legacy given to us by experience not just words or vows.

It is Love with feet and hands and hugs and laughter.  

It is Love that bore the family traditions which now give us comfort and hope.

It is Love that gives Dad strength to visit a sacred place this day...

Love Always...

              An Anchor in the Storm.