A Happy Ending for Paul
The rest of the story is that Fran was my mother, and Paul was my stepfather.
After those five years in grief counseling, the counselor wisely advised Paul to call an old friend and ask him or her out to dinner. Although Paul hadn’t seen my mother for years, he remembered her fondly as a close friend of his deceased wife. So out of the blue, he called my mother.
And my mother, who had been living it up in places like the fiords of Norway and Hawaiian cruise ships, had never dated since my father died. All of a sudden, at 71 years of age, this social butterfly was nervous.
You might be guessing correctly that the story has an incredibly happy ending. It wasn’t a year later before my sisters and I were wedding dress shopping with our mother and tying tin cans onto the bumper of Paul’s royal-blue Buick.
My mother and Paul spent 17 terrific years together before they passed away within six months of each other but not before they traveled the world, mostly with their local bank group. My sisters and I often talk about this wonderful couple and relish in the joy they found late in life. However, our hearts break to think our wonderful stepfather had spent many years so alone and lonely.
We only wish a Diana Thorson or a Christine Detrick would have been there to help.
