Three Little Words

Everyone remembers when they said “I love you” for the first time to their person. You probably felt it for awhile before professing it to each other and of course there’s always the self-questioning of, “Do I say it first? Should I wait for them to say it before I do? I don’t want to scare them off. I’d better wait… No. I’ll say it. Wait. Maybe not.”

We’ve all been there.

The beginning of this video was right after that moment between us. We were in his green truck, in the parking lot of Lidl. We were just about to say goodbye when he said: “Wait. There’s something I want to tell you…and I think you might already know what I’m about to say…but, I’ve fallen in love with you.” (Both of us tearing up) “I love you, Megan. I can’t help it. I really do.”

“Oh…wow. Wow. I love you too!”

It has always been one of our most treasured memories and every time we drove past that Lidl, we’d squeeze each other’s hand as if to say those three beautiful words to each other all over again.

After we were both on our way home that day, I sent him a Marco Polo professing it again. I had been bottling it up for so long at that point because of my own period of the aforementioned self-questioning. I wanted so badly to tell him how I felt for quite some time up to that point, and now I finally could. And when I listen to his message back to me, it’s clear that he, too, was going through the same thing.

I made this video quite a few months into our relationship as a gift for him. He always gave me such a hard time for taking pictures and videos but when he saw what I actually did with them, he stopped bothering me about it. He LOVED this video and we’d always cry when we watched it. It encapsulates our little life together so perfectly and how happy the six of us were together.

The same night I asked him to listen to “Ordinary” by Alex Warren, I pulled the video up on my phone and we watched it again for the first time in at least two years. We marveled at how much the kids had all changed, we talked about how much we missed that sweet house that we made all of those happy memories in, “Happy Oaks.” And…we cried.

That was just weeks before his accident.

I can’t help but feel that our guardian angels must have been given specific instructions by God to nudge us into nostalgia, a breath away from his death. Watching this video together, while smoking cigars, which we also hadn’t done in quite a long time, (a pastime that we loved in those early days but unfortunately, didn’t love us back), allowed us to step back in time and to see how far we’d come.

We certainly had our moments when we didn’t give our best to each other, but we always knew that with each passing day, week, month and year, we fell more deeply in love than we were that day in the Lidl parking lot. And even more than we were in this video. Life does that to you, I suppose, if you’re one of the lucky ones.

The kids all know this song as our “family song.” They loved this video so much and it brings me immeasurable joy to know that whenever they hear it they think of our life together with this incredible force of a man. The last slide is extra painful now. He loved Ernest Hemingway, and I had no idea when I made this video just a few short years ago that it would carry so much more meaning in such an unimaginable short amount of time.

Father’s Day wasn’t the same without you, Pop. Life isn’t the same without you.

What I wouldn’t give to be back at Happy Oaks with you, dancing in that tiny kitchen, watching the hummingbirds, and sitting around our table making the best memories this family has ever experienced. Thank you for loving us so well.

I’ll forever be your lady.