People say that once you meet your soul mate, colorful sparks will fly so bright above, hearts will pound, knees will go trembling and hands will shake. I strongly disagree. I don’t believe any of it and soon you would find out why.

I believe in love. I have been in love and I believe that the best kind of love is the kind that takes you by surprise, the kind that comes when you are not even searching, the kind that storms into your life, the kind that invades your heart.

I was married to the love of my life for Fifty seven years. Ours isn’t a story of a love at first sight nor is it a story of Cinderella and her prince charming; because truth be told, I’m no prince neither do I live in a fancy castle. I am just an ordinary man or I was just an ordinary man, an ordinary man from the small town of White Oak in North Carolina.

Amora. Sitting beside her graveside, I sigh. Not a sigh of regret but one of gratitude; a sigh of fulfilment. I have lived a life many only dream about. I have loved deeply and completely and I was loved back with the same measure, - if not greater.-

The sky is clear and blue. It is always like that at this time of the year. As I watch the birds chirp so cheerily, I start to wonder, mostly of the choices I have made in my eighty nine years on this earth. I wonder what would have happened if I strode a different path, if I had different parents, if I wasn’t born in White Oak or If I hadn’t met Amora, my late wife and the mother of my four boys.
“I want four boys. Four handsome boys. Four little you.” Amora always said.
She got her wish. It’s like whoever was up there heard her.

I believed there was a God but I chose to forget, to lose faith.  I questioned a lot of things, why would one being create the universe and all that is in it and then sit back and let His creation destroy themselves or be destroyed all the same? But then when I met Amora, I began to see things a little more differently. I began to remember. Each time I beheld her eyes, each time I fondled her hands, each time I kissed her, I knew there was a God. There had to be a God, a God that destined I would meet Amora -a woman like her doesn’t just happen to you- a God that made Amora just for me. She believed in that God, at first it was annoying but then it became almost magical.

I have never been the kind of man to tell stories, – I usually get exhausted half way through a story- but this story is one story I could tell a hundred times, a thousand times or even a million times. –You get my point.- Even with my wrinkled skin, completely bald head, weak bones and tired knees, the memories are as fresh and new as anything could be. It feels like it just happened yesterday. You bet I am so happy to relive each moment as I tell my story.