Monday Morning Musing: Signs, Signs, Everywhere....

            Bruce proposed marriage to me in the least romantic place possible….in front of a STOP sign while parked in the carpool line at my daughter’s middle school.  To be fair, it wasn’t his fault that this was the spot for the question that would change us both. 

            Unbeknownst to me, he had determined that he would propose at a lovely park, located along the route between the airport in Columbus, Ohio and my home about an hour away, in Upper Sandusky.  He wanted to have my answer before the week of his visit began in earnest and he wanted Taylor to be able to share in our excitement as soon as possible.  I’d long said that I never wanted another engagement ring, but he’d found a lovely ring with Celtic knots crafted by a Seattle jeweler that didn’t scream “He liked it, so he put a ring on it.” 

            The trouble was, his plane was late and I was driving and we had a deadline to meet for picking Taylor up from school.  So, as much as he tried to set the stage by suggesting several miles ahead that we stop at said lovely park, I was having nothing of it.  The student pick up line waits for no one.  So we zoomed past the park and then we zoomed past every single alternate place as he pointed out the window and suggested….”hey, this looks nice, let’s stop for a minute.”

            Which is how we found ourselves parked in front of the Middle School, by the STOP sign and the crosswalk with about three minutes before the dismissal bell rang.  And in the front seat of my mom-car he lovingly took my hand and said “I’d hoped to ask you this at the park….”

            The last time we were in Upper Sandusky, just a few years ago, we went back and parked in that very spot and laughed about the story.  It’s especially ironic considering that I spent almost the next two decades pulling over for every photo-worthy thing he saw on the side of whatever road we happened to be on.  We laughed about the fact that the STOP sign didn’t portend anything about our life together.  We never stopped loving one another, or respecting one another, or laughing together or saying yes to the next adventure.  The sign should have said GO! 

            I recently found the photo we took that day.  As you can see, it’s really not very romantic.  But I wondered to myself if there was now a message in that sign.  Had my relationship, had our adventures, had our love and respect stopped when Bruce died?  Of course not.

This is the place!

            A couple of weeks after Bruce died I found myself in a construction zone with this sign glaring at me.

Yes, a rough road indeed.  But still, a road.  Still a way forward.  Still a way to get where I am going, which I know will be forever changed by his absence, and yet, I know deep within that he would want me to keep going.  To claim adventure.  To remember the love we shared and that still lives in me.  To respect myself in the same way he showed such deep respect for me.  I know that he would not want me to stop for anything less than the love he left here that still shimmers around us, capturing us in every moment – the ordinary ones and the extraordinary ones – like a gifted and loving photographer captures its subject in the perfect photo.