The Ultimate Chance
On Memorial Day, honoring those who gave their lives so that a boy and a girl could take a chance on love.
Memorial Day always brings up mixed feelings for me. One of the biggest is gratitude. My head is filled with the voices of my great-uncles and grandfathers—men who went off to WWII, and all lived to come home. Stories that left shadows in their eyes and a type of quietness most will never understand. Men who lived into my thirties, so the voices aren’t that far away.
It is also a weekend of what, for me, is a love story.
Tony and I met in a chat room in January 1998. We did not meet in person until Memorial Day weekend that year. For many years, we told people we met through mutual friends. In a way, we did. My cousin was in the chat room, called me long distance, and told me to “get my butt online.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
We both knew that something special had happened when we met that night, both of us shutting down with promises to email each other, and what followed were long emails filled with stories of our lives, hopes, fears, and dreams. We both walked away knowing our lives had irrevocably changed and that this was forever—something we discussed many times over the years.
I can't help but read the symbolism: meeting the love of my life on a weekend dedicated to honoring those who gave their lives. As his widow, the connection is impossible to ignore.
And to think, I almost blew it. I was terrified of meeting Tony in person. We knew each other so well, had shared the darkest parts of our souls, our most broken selves, through long emails, handwritten letters, and expensive phone calls. And broken we were—two naive twenty-five-year-olds with enough combined trauma to sink a flotilla. So after crying for hours and talking to him on the phone, I got in the car nd made that drive to meet him. We had both made separate plans that had brought us to Virginia Beach for the weekend. The rest, as they say, is history.
I wish I had pictures of that day. A smartphone would have come in handy. But all I have are memories of a guy in loose Calvin Klein jeans, a white Armani Exchange shirt, black suede loafers, and glasses, standing nervously in a parking lot, waiting for a girl he had met in a chat room five months earlier.
It’s funny how life works out. Our son, the same age as we were, is starting a new tomorrow on that anniversary meeting date. Instead of a public defender, he is now a civil litigator. Making more money than we did put together in our first year of marriage. Back when all we had to worry about was what show we would watch on television in the evening. Life was simple, and we were content because we were together after 1.5 years of long-distance dating, in a bubble filled with love and prenatal appointments.
So this weekend, as I line my yard with tiny flags in a show of gratitude to those who did not come home, I am also filled with joy. Joy that a boy and a girl took a chance on Memorial Day weekend in 1998 and realized what we knew in our online bubble: that love is worth every hardest moment. And even though they no longer walk this physical earth, their love lives on in us.