What I’ve Been Up To

A dash of hope pre Jon and Kate

I know, I know, Jon and Kate Gosselin filed for divorce somewhere near their Pennsylvania home today.  Having been there and done that, I can say I sympathize.  And I cannot imagine what it must be like to go through something so soul shredding in the public eye.

But I can also say there is hope out there.  This morning, I gave a speech in Montreal to a room full of credit union executives and board members.  I sat next to a man twice widowed.  He had lost both wives to cancer, the first diagnosed when she was only 28 years old, the second within a year to lung cancer (and, yes, she never smoked.)  He had a smile on his face as he relayed this story courtesy of his third bride, who was at home recovering from surgery.  (She is doing well, we hear, and we’re very glad.)

The third bride, a woman named Mary, works in a jewelry store.  Not a place to meet men, she says, though she met her husband there (but that’s another story for another day).  Late last week a man in his late 20s walked into the jewelry store to pick out a diamond ring for his bride.  He’d been saving for this day, he said, since he was in his late teens and put a quarter in a jar — to eventually buy a ring for the woman he’d eventually fall in love with.  To that jar he added another quarter, and another, and another.

Over a decade later, he walked into this Wisconsin jewelry store and poured out — onto a glass counter that must have been plenty thick — enough quarters to pay for a $2700 engagement ring.  We are told a picture is forthcoming.  (We will post it when we get it.)  And we wish the groom-to-be, his new bride, our storytelling friend and his third-wife Mary all the best.

We are still believers in love that lasts.