Day 256, September 11

I'm taking a break from the personal history to write of something even more personal. 

Today is the 69th anniversary of my parents' wedding.  How wonderful to think of them married, then sealed in the Holy Temple, and together forever.  My mother died just three days after their 53rd anniversary, but we never doubted that she and my father were still together.

Mom and Dad had very little when they married.  I recall my father saying that on their first night of marriage they tried to heat up a can of oyster stew in a dishpan on their small apartment stove.  (They had no sauce pans; indeed, they had nothing in the way of cookware or dishware aside from that dishpan.)

Shortly after their marriage, my father was shipped overseas to the Pacific Theatre.  There he spent the next year, suffering a wound.  When he returned to the States, he had to spend time in a veterans' hospital.  He and my mother decided he should further his education.  He graduated from college, then earned a law degree while she supported the both of them working as a secretary.

There were no fancy diinners out for them, no expensive furniture or clothes, only work and more work.  But they survived and thrived because they loved each other and loved the Lord.

So, for today, I am grateful for my parents' eternal union.