On Memorial Day weekend of 2005, I was still in the Navy and stationed in Maryland, but was using my time off to visit home to Rockford. Of course I saw family members; but the supreme reason for this _particular_ visit was to see the former Janalee Whippler, with whom my deceased Mary and I had been acquainted long ago. That final Saturday of May 2005 was the first time Jan and I were ever physically in the same place....with both of us unmarried.
For more than two months preceding this meeting, I had been rebuilding and expanding my friendship with Jan via telephone calls and writing. I had learned much about how God had cleansed her from the straying into sin that had ended her first marriage. In fact, Jan's ex-husband Rich had _encouraged_ my growing closer to Jan. So, with geographical distance giving the benefit of keeping our first interactions purely spiritual and personality-based, Jan and I had already grown close in ways that mattered, even _before_ I knocked on her apartment door and saw her again.
Jan and I ended up getting married--with me in my Navy dress uniform--a year and a half after my Mary's arrival in Heaven. Mary had seen me into the Navy; it was left to Jan to share my retirement ceremony. Jan was given two and a half years to live as my wife, before God called her home also. Now, it has been more than two years since Jan crossed over to glory; but on this Memorial Day weekend, I am particularly remembering her.
Some people don't get it. I did not stop loving Mary when I married Jan; and I have not stopped loving Jan just because I don't feel duty-bound to be a hermit for the rest of my earthly life.
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Anybody who "doesn't get it" can buzz off. I do believe that everybody who knows you well and cares about you DOES "get it" and you may's well give your thought to us and not the nitwits who harass you out of lack of understanding.
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