Blog 3119 – 05.14.2024

We’ve Only Just Begun

I was not quite twenty and about three quarters through my eleven month long tour in South Vietnam in August of 1970 when The Carpenters released their single We’ve Only Just begun. I was hoping its words would be true for me and my first little wife at the time. Though I did not know it then she had already found another. In her own words that were quoted to me later she had decided that, “She would never be a wife to me..”

I would in the next several years marry twice more and fail twice more at finding the words of the song to be true in my life. All total those three marriages lasted barely ten years with the third lasting seven, and that I think because we had a little girl together which made me try even harder to keep the marriage in tact for Emily’s sake.

Then I met my Linda Lee, the woman who my Mom upon first meeting her predicted, “That woman is never going to let you go.” In three months we will celebrate thirty-five years of marriage. We both found in each other our only just begun and come grow old with me the best is yet to be.

I retired from my mostly away from home contract inspector job a couple of years ago that I had been at for almost ten years. I hoped that retirement for us would be a chance to see Paris briefly then to spent the rest of our lives traveling with an RV camper trailer in tow all around the United States.

Alas, a little over a month after I retired my lovely and loving wife’s mental health took an abrupt turn downward and all our travel plans had to scrapped. It is difficult to watch her battle the voices that she hears that I do not. Little by little she is losing the battle and my hope, my intention, my prayers is that I am able to love and care for her till the battle is no more. I expect no miracle healing or remission of her condition only a steady decline till the girl I married ceases to hear the voices that are tormenting her so. It is heartbreaking to watch the one you love so much struggling so. She was proscribed pills to take but refused to take them, choosing to fight. She does still have periods where she is lucid and smiling, mostly when she sees pictures of our granddaughter Emma or gets to hold her.

How I wish I could believe still that we have only just begun, but our story is ending. The optimist in me still hopes for Dreams Yet To Come and lives yet to live. Happily ever after is how fairytales end. Too often our stories have stormy and sad endings. Here’s to the hope of new beginnings.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David White

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hbkAJsXTYtjrxFDNh1KBtK1Tn-w_RP6r/view?usp=drivesdk

We’ve Only Just Begun