When most utter for richer or poorer the hope is that they never have to experience it. Imagine feeling the sting of infidelity, unemployment, autistic children, locked up boys who fell short of expectations and hearing, I want a divorce, there in your white dress.
At the altar you’re flying with the clouds, 10 years into the marriage, the world has crashed down on you. But those words are replayed back to you…for better or for worse.
I have seen true love.
When drug addictions, extreme poverty, homelessness, and 9 kids, my parents lost came along, no one packed their bags, they remembered a vow they never made—to have and to hold forever.
My parents never got married, but they stayed true to each other. Three days old, my father who lived in the neighborhood, looked in her crib and said my mother was the most beautiful baby he’d ever seen and that he’d marry her one day.
My Granddad tried to chase him away and he’s spent the last 36 years they’ve been together still trying. But their love is unbreakable. If you ask my mother to sing you a song, in her strong alto voice, the only song that comes from her heart, she’ll sing, “inseparable…yes baby…that’s what we are.”
When my mother turned 18 my father bought her a red corvette. They had it all. They had 4 houses, all the cars you could imagine and took trips all around the country. Money was not an object. When they battled a drug addiction, the money was gone, but love still persist.
I asked my parents why they never got married and my father said, “Because it would hurt me too much if my wife ever left me.” My mother started laughing like I’d never heard her laugh.
“One time I told your Dad that I was leaving and he looked at me and said, where we going. I knew that day I was stuck with him for life.”
This conversation we had on the porch of an abandoned house they were squatting. They have taught me everything I needed to know about love, life and loyalty. So while my parents did not raise me and have made some decisions that have negatively impacted me I am eternally grateful for the lesson their love taught me.
We ride together, we love together. I'm your's for life.
