During the past four days I stayed so busy, it made sure the feelings didn't have time to either run over me (the rock) or linger long enough at any one time to trip the landmine. This morning, as I dressed for work, I could really feel the rock and I started to react to it. But, I had an early morning meeting at work and I pushed it away in order to do my day job.
This afternoon, I met with my grief counselor and we talked about the rock, landmines and the gauntlet. All are reasonable analogies for the emotions I am dealing with. She also suggested I make time in my calendar to let some of this emerge so I could deal with it little by little. I hope I can do that in the next few days.
Dinner on Valentines evening was with MaryR and me at Ingrid's place and Maurice was the cook. An excellent meal was prepared and it was delicious, thank you, Maurice.
I remembered a bit more about Valentine's Day of 1996. In 1995, Mary had just moved here from Scottsdale and for Valentines Day of 1995 I asked her that we not discuss or spend time on "what's next" in our relationship for a year. Rather, let's spend time on us and seeing if this is a relationship that truly works. For Valentine's dinner of 1996, we picked Pedro's Cantina in Los Gatos. During the meal, Mary very gently led me to the issue that was on her mind but not so aggressively that I'd bolt and run (hey, I did that in 1968!)
As I recall, her words were along the line of "It was a year ago we had Valentine's Dinner shortly after I moved here from Scottsdale." Frankly, those words had no impact when she first said them but then as the discussion continued about this and that while the meal continued, it dawned on me that this was the one year mark! How I could have forgotten? And not prepared a special Valentines Card is one of the great mysteries of the male mind. Her gentle statement did help me remember. I did panic about almost forgetting. I did NOT panic about what to say. Somewhere during that year it was clearly plain to me I was going to marry this woman if she'd have me, so I blurted out "Mary, I want to marry you if you will agree." And, obviously, she said yes.
The next step, of course, is the ring. We started shopping in Los Gatos and the first shop we hit was Gehrkens (http://www.gehrkens.com) and he had a beautiful ring in the window. Amazingly enough, it was Mary's size. We thanked Ken for his time and told him this was our first stop and we really wanted to do more shopping before making a selection. We looked over the next several weeks and then we decided to go back to Gehrkens.
As I walked in, I said to Ken "Looks like you sold that ring, oh well."
He responded, "Oh no, I set it aside, I knew you'd be back." At that point he opened the safe, pulled out an envelope marked "Mary and Pat" with no last names, no phone numbers nor other identifying items and out spilled the ring. It still fit Mary beautifully. He was right, we were back! As we visited other shops, we had found ourselves comparing this ring to all the others we found and concluded it was the ring she wanted. As an aside, Mary did not want a set, she wanted a single ring for engagement and marriage. (If the picture does not appear below, click here.)
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| From Mary E Quirk Hughes Lamey--Later Years |
This picture was taken at the Los Altos Hills Country Club during an Easter Brunch with Dean and Cheryl. The look on Mary's face is priceless! Sort of a "I finally landed that fish!"
And this fish was happily caught! And in love.
Ciao
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