I sat alone on the back porch swing, my mind filled with thoughts of my wife, Jeannie. This was one of our favorite places to spend time, listening to the birds sing, reliving the highlights from nearly 53 years of marriage, with three grown children and too many blessings to count. I looked over at the empty space next to me, sort of half-expecting to see Jeannie there. My wife had died a little over a week earlier from sepsis, her death sudden, unexpected. The reality of it all was still sinking in.
Jeannie had wanted us to add on this porch nearly from the day we’d moved into the house nine years earlier. Finally, we’d made the investment. If I’d known we’d only have a year to enjoy it together, I wouldn’t have waited so long. The porch seemed to draw out our most playful conversations.
“I wonder when exactly we had our first date?” Jeannie would ask. “And when did we kiss for the very first time?” Such questions had become a kind of private joke between us in our golden years. Who could remember the specific details of happenings so long ago? There was a time I could have surprised her with precise answers, however. I’d kept careful track of our young love. Ticket stubs. Letters Jeannie and I had written to each other. Silly mementos. I wished I’d been more organized or foreseen a day when a milestone date scribbled on a scrap of paper would mean the world to me. A connection that kept us close.
Once Jeannie was by my side “till death do us part,” being together forever was all that mattered. Forever was now, I thought, as a bird flew across the yard. What I wouldn’t give to have all those answers.
Thank goodness I’d finally relented and agreed to add on this porch where she teased me. But there was something else I’d put off despite Jeannie’s frequent requests to see it through. We still had boxes stacked up against a wall in the garage, stuff we’d brought with us in our move. Boxes still unopened. We didn’t find ourselves needing anything that might be hidden in the mystery boxes, so clearing out the garage was never exactly a pressing chore. And I couldn’t imagine sorting through nine-year-old boxes now.
I resettled myself on the swing. Maybe I couldn’t pinpoint the “when” for Jeannie, but my memories were crystal clear.
Jeannie and I had first met in church, while we were still in elementary school. I fondly remembered being invited to her thirteenth birthday party, how we’d sung “I Dream of Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair.” How smitten I was with her. We never dated anyone else, and our love grew deeper with each year of our marriage.
We shared a lively sense of humor, and often took long drives to nowhere in particular, exploring the Indiana countryside, savoring the beauty of God’s creation. For many years Jeannie worked as a teaching assistant at an elementary school, nurturing children with special needs. I was a pastor, and we’d committed our lives to service, family and each other.
In my mind I heard her voice. The pleasure of hearing her say my name. I got up from the swing and walked through the house in a kind of fog, my steps leading me to the garage.
I opened the door. There against the wall was the tall stack of boxes. Just where they’d stay, untouched for the time being. One box had toppled over onto the floor, and the least I could do was set it back in place. I bent over to pick it up. Across the top, sometime long ago, I’d written: Ted’s Memorabilia. It was sealed with strips of old packing tape, yellowed and curled at the edges. Covered in dust.
I pulled off the tape and opened the box. It proved to be a treasure chest of notes, envelopes, receipts, ticket stubs. A faded flier announced the weeklong church camp Jeannie and I attended when we were in junior high. She was 12 and I was 14. On the closing evening, I’d nervously invited her to sit with me at the celebratory banquet. She’d worn a beautiful pink dress, and I felt like the luckiest guy at camp. I didn’t want the evening to come to an end. At the bottom of the flier I saw printed “June 1959.” Our first date.
Underneath the flier was a piece of notepaper, a few sentences recorded in my youthful handwriting. “Took Jeannie to the junior dance,” it read. “I kissed her on the forehead. End of last song. March 4, 1961.” A first kiss.
Stapled to that message was another piece of paper, another memory preserved, this one 13 days after the dance. “Took Jeannie to a movie. When I drove her home, we said goodbye at her front door. Kissed goodnight!” Our first kiss on the lips.
All I wanted was to run to Jeannie and surprise her with the answers to her questions. She would have laughed with delight. I sat quietly with the old box that had held my memories in safekeeping all these years. This one box that had toppled to the floor on this day, as if guided by some angelic hand. Someone else had been listening to my porch conversations with Jeannie and my prayers to feel close to her now. I didn’t need to tell Jeannie the answers. God had let her tell me so that we could laugh together again.
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