My dearest Debbie

Four months have now passed since you suddenly left me.

Everything has changed. I am now spending most of my
time with tears in my eyes and my heart in pieces as you are
no longer standing or resting by my side. Almost every thought
moving through my exhausted brain is about you. I have been
thinking of thousands of different things and all of them involve
you.

I recently recalled our gentle arguments about whether you saw me first or I saw you first in that restaurant where you worked in Houston. I still say I saw you first. I was sitting at the bar with a gentleman I knew in business and turned my head and saw the most amazingly beautiful woman I had ever seen as the hostess greeting new arrivals. I had been divorced for a period of time and actually somewhat shy.
Despite your claim during our gentle arguments, you didnt notice
me sitting at the bar that night as you were much too busy.

I made a decision to visit the same restaurant again the following night ONLY to see you again. You greeted me at the entrance and spoke to me for the first time and I was almost speechless.

I fell in love with you the moment you began speaking to me. I
can still remember the white blouse and dark blue skirt you were
wearing with your hair flowing down your back. I can still see the
exciting sparkle in your eyes and that gorgeous smile as you spoke
to me. Suddenly, all of the love songs I had heard in my life made
sense. It was truly magical !

I chose to sat at the bar again with a good seat where I could
see you. Later, you came over and talked to me. I was slightly
aggravated internally when I learned I was 16 years older than you.
I thought you were so beautiful and delightful that I just knew you
didnt have to settle for dating an older man like me. That was
over 31 years ago.

You trusted me and confided in me and told me over a period of time
in those very early years of all the difficult experiences, mistreatment and terrible misfortunes in your life prior to meeting me.

We dated for a period of time and we made a decision almost 28 years
ago to share a home in the country 50 miles from Houston. Then, we
decided to make it official and I proposed to you and we married in
a Methodist church on New Years Eve in 1990. Your family didnt attend as they didnt consider it to be a real marriage as you were Catholic and I was simply a Christian. I knew that bothered you over the years and I promised myself I would resolve that problem someday.

After we married, I told you there was no reason for you to work any
longer as I would take care of you and protect you. I did everything I
could to please you and make your dreams come true. You got your
horses and you were surrounded by your beloved German Shepherds
and your cats and all that nature has to offer living in the country. You
changed from a beautiful city girl to a beautiful country girl and
never looked back.

I began to travel on business over the years and you were by my side on visits to cities throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa and many other parts of the world. I was thrilled as I watched your excitement when you were standing on the balcony in the footsteps of Mahatma Gandhi in India or when we walked beneath the Eiffel Tower or we were swimming with the dolphins in the Caribbean or at the top of a live volcano in Costa Rica. So many memories. So many memories.

Along the way in our travels, I arranged a surprise for you on a business trip to the Bahamas. You had been through a very difficult time earlier that year. Before the trip, I asked you if you wanted to renew our wedding vows during our visit to the Bahamas and you said yes.

I slightly misled you and left the impression a minister would conduct a brief ceremony on the beach. Unknown to you and through a good friend, I arranged a carefully planned surprise for you. I bought a beautiful Bahamian wedding gown for you. You climbed in a limo and you thought you were on your way to the beach to meet me. Instead,
you were delivered to a Roman Catholic Church with a full congregation where I was waiting at the altar with a bouquet of flowers and standing with the priest, Father Reggie. The look on your face was priceless and is still treasured to this very moment. You were so
beautiful as you walked toward me and I met you halfway down the aisle and gave the flowers to you.

We renewed our wedding vows in a Roman Catholic Church with a complete Roman Catholic Wedding Mass. Father Reggie absolved you of all your sins and you were able to take communion for the first time since you were nine years old. You were finally married in the Roman Catholic Church and we had it all on video. The Mass was followed
by a reception at a dinner as my business associates from 40+ countries toasted you and me and celebrated with us. You were on top of the world and there is no doubt that was the happiest day in your life.

The following year, we visited Rome and, through another friend and much to your great surprise, we were amongst a group blessed by Pope Benedict. Your family was a bit shocked by that one as your non-Catholic husband managed to do the unexpected. I constantly got a kick out of making the impossible happen for you when you were least
expecting it over the years.

The memories are so many that I cannot include all of them in this letter to you. Besides, you lived through all of them. I have decided to write in a journal and to begin recording every good memory that I can recall from the first moment I met you. I plan to sit at our kitchen table that served us well for so many years and to light a candle for you each time that I add to my new journal in the days, weeks, months and years ahead. This letter shall be the first pages of my new journal about my endless loving memories of you. I am doing it for myself as I dont want to forget anything with the passage of time. At some points in the future, I want to be able to light candles for you and go back and read what I have written to be able to relive those experiences I shared with you. Perhaps I shall leave the journal to someone or perhaps not. That
is not important now as I am doing it for myself.

There is one area I wish to mention in this letter to you that we did not discuss while you were here. In recent years, I knew you were under a lot of stress for one reason. I was getting older and you were horrified of losing me and facing the world alone. It wasnt money, You simply did not want to have to face the world without me. You were also worried about your two older sisters with both having serious health issues and you were also worried about losing your elderly Mother. After you left and perhaps you know by now, one of your sisters has been diagnosed with terminal cancer and shall soon be joining you.

The stress was slowly getting to you in recent years. You didnt talk to me about it but you mentioned it to others and they quietly told me. You didnt want to worry me.

What you didnt know was the fact I was constantly stressing over the same thing during the past few years. I just didnt talk to you about it. I didnt want to add to your stress. I wasnt afraid of dying. I was afraid of dying and leaving you alone to face the world. I thought about it often and had a terrible time even slightly thinking about you grieving over my death and having to deal with all of the horrible aspects of
grief that relentlessly follow. That was based upon what I thought I knew about grief and it is much worse than I had ever imagined. It never crossed my mind that you could go before me. It just never occurred to me as I was 16 years older than you.

I am still doing things for you. I have spread some of your ashes at our favorite beach in Surfside. I hope you were watching that day. I shall be visiting Montana in a few months to spread more of your ashes in
accordance with your requests to a number of people over the years. I am also making arrangements to have your remaining ashes interred in a cemetery plot next to mine. Dont worry. Despite not being a Catholic, I shall somehow convince a Roman Catholic priest to conduct a service for you when it takes place. I am hopeful you will be looking down and smiling that day. We shall end up resting beside one another. If all goes as planned and HE answers my prayers as I think shall be the case, we shall both be looking down together at a point in the future.

I have no doubts as to where you are. I saw your absolute faith in HIM so many times over the years. To my surprise, most people dont see even one miracle performed by HIM in their lifetimes. I did take it for granted that almost everyone has seen at least one miracle by HIM at some point but have learned that is not the case. As you know, you and I were exposed to some very, very difficult and somewhat horrible situations over the years with health and other issues. With two situations, the possibilities of survival were slim and none , as they say. Yet, HE intervened with astounding results when we thought all hope was lost. For whatever reason(s), you and I were exposed
to four different miracles performed by HIM during our many years together. HE performed miracles in 1988, 1998, 2004 and 2014 and you know all of the scary details. There are no alternative explanations for what ultimately happened in those situations. They were absolute miracles performed by HIM. Other people that were involved in one way or another also regard them as miracles performed by HIM. I am going to write about each of them in my new journal in the future.

I have been doing a lot of painful thinking about why you left so suddenly. I believe it is possible HE looked at the situation. HE looked at your difficult life before I met you and HE also knew the awful things you and I had been through together. He knew you were very tired and worn down despite your youth. HE also knew you were still grieving over the loss of your beloved Aunt Christine and your Father and HE was aware of your constant anxious fears of losing me and others and being left alone. I think it is possible that maybe, just maybe, HE
decided you had endured enough pain and misery while on this planet.

I dont pretend to know what HIS plans were for you or are for me or anyone else. It would be presumptuous for me to even dare to present such a claim. But, with HIS unlimited Wisdom, Grace, Mercy, and Love, I think it is possible that HE took you to spare you from the massive pain and devastating experience that we commonly call grief . I think it it may be possible he looked at you and said, Come on, girl. You have had enough. Darrell and the others will join you soon enough. .

So, there is one final thing I am doing for the woman with whom I was deeply in love ( and with whom I am still deeply in love ). There is one last thing I can do for my wife, my friend, my companion, my trusted confidant and the one to whom I was completely devoted and now miss with every breath I take and every beat of my heart.

It is the last great thing I can do for you. You will not have to arrange or attend my funeral or go through the shock of reality that follows in a short period of time. You will not have to sit alone in our home and wait for me to walk through the door or wait for my phone call that will never come. You will never have look at our photos and have to deal with the should haves or could haves or look at all of the things we
collected during our daily lives or during our travels with a constant flood of tears as the endless good memories violently clash with the fact I am no longer here.

Today, New Years Eve, is our 25th wedding anniversary.

I had planned to surprise you with a magnificent adventure and an anniversary gift that I believe you would have treasured. But, it was not to be.

Instead, this letter is part of my 25th anniversary gift to you. It is written with the massive pain of losing you mixed with overwhelming love for you in my heart and from the deepest depths of my soul. Carrying the burden of grief for you is the last part of the gift I can give to you and it
is being done with unconditional love while knowing you will never have to go through this terrifying experience with tears flowing down your lovely cheeks. My greatest fear of leaving you behind to suffer like this will never take place and I am going through this for you with unlimited love for you.

Happy Anniversary, my dearest sweet Deborah Ann.

Your loving husband,

Darrell