Widows & Widowers Support Group
This community is dedicated to those who have lost a husband, wife, or partner. Anything is open for discussion here, with the hope that we can focus on grief, bereavement, life after loss, and continuing on after a great loss.
September 17th is our wedding anniversary and I was thinking of some memorable things that happened on our honeymoon. Pat and I got married on Yom Kippur- since I'm not Jewish I had no clue what Yom Kippur was - however since half the people we invited were Jewish I soon learned that jewish people should not be going out till after the sun goes down - no wonder the banquet places were all available.
So - we set off for Mexico and flew on Mexicana - with free Mexicana beer. Being afraid to fly I drank my can then switched with my husband's can and downed that one too when he wasn't looking - all before he had a chance to take a sip. I'll never forget the look on his face when he realized both cans were empty within minutes. We stayed at the Princess Hotel in Acapulco - an absolutely beautiful place. The next morning my husband announced we'd have to change rooms because of the noise he was hearing at 3 am. I'm like "what noise?" He said "if you stand on the chair and put your ear next to the wall you can hear it." What? - he was standing on a chair at 3 am?
So - we changed rooms - and got an even better room - stayed there a few days then flew to Cancun. I developed a severe ear infection and a doctor prescribed pain killers along with antibiotics. I was in sooo much pain. Don't know what I took or how many but remember Pat saying to me one day "I'm going in the men's room - don't move". (we were outside the door to the restroom) Needless to say - I moved - I wandered off. I remember at one point being sprawled across the couch in the lobby of this fancy hotel. After a couple of hours a thought crossed my mind - "I'm supposed to be here with someone!" and I got up to look for him. At this point I ran into my "frantic" new husband who said he had visions of me wandering the streets of Mexico.
When it came time to sadly bid farewell to Mexico we ran into a slight problem. The travel agent had asked my husband his nationality and he said he was irish and I was swedish so the travel agent wrote on our Mexican papers that we were from Ireland and Sweden. When we arrived at the airport the official said "we need to see your VISA's from Sweden and Ireland and we were like What? He gave us a hard time and somewhat of a scare - although he obviously knew we were from the US. Wish we had returned someday to Mexico - but we had good memories.
Anyone want to comment on your honeymoon too?
So - we set off for Mexico and flew on Mexicana - with free Mexicana beer. Being afraid to fly I drank my can then switched with my husband's can and downed that one too when he wasn't looking - all before he had a chance to take a sip. I'll never forget the look on his face when he realized both cans were empty within minutes. We stayed at the Princess Hotel in Acapulco - an absolutely beautiful place. The next morning my husband announced we'd have to change rooms because of the noise he was hearing at 3 am. I'm like "what noise?" He said "if you stand on the chair and put your ear next to the wall you can hear it." What? - he was standing on a chair at 3 am?
So - we changed rooms - and got an even better room - stayed there a few days then flew to Cancun. I developed a severe ear infection and a doctor prescribed pain killers along with antibiotics. I was in sooo much pain. Don't know what I took or how many but remember Pat saying to me one day "I'm going in the men's room - don't move". (we were outside the door to the restroom) Needless to say - I moved - I wandered off. I remember at one point being sprawled across the couch in the lobby of this fancy hotel. After a couple of hours a thought crossed my mind - "I'm supposed to be here with someone!" and I got up to look for him. At this point I ran into my "frantic" new husband who said he had visions of me wandering the streets of Mexico.
When it came time to sadly bid farewell to Mexico we ran into a slight problem. The travel agent had asked my husband his nationality and he said he was irish and I was swedish so the travel agent wrote on our Mexican papers that we were from Ireland and Sweden. When we arrived at the airport the official said "we need to see your VISA's from Sweden and Ireland and we were like What? He gave us a hard time and somewhat of a scare - although he obviously knew we were from the US. Wish we had returned someday to Mexico - but we had good memories.
Anyone want to comment on your honeymoon too?
My hubby and I married July 15, 1978. We set off to Niagara Falls, Canada. On way, we stopped in Binghington (sp?), NY for the night. Room had 2 double beds. Now, hubby had been drinking at the reception and naturally did all the driving, so he was bushed and plopped on one of the beds. Me, being all of 21, expected the magic that comes with the first night. So I go change into my negligee. It was a very poofy thing, and my husband was more in hysterics than he was in "the mood". He then jokingly announces that since we have two beds, one is his and the other mine. I guess you know that didn't go over well with me at all.
We get to Niagara Falls the next day. Upon entering our room, my first instinct is to flop backward on the bed. I did, and it literally knocked the wind out of me. The mattress was solid like a rock, in addition to being round. We slept on it, complete with regular sheets. Every hear of square sheets on a round bed? Well, we had them.
I became ill after dinner one evening. There was a senior bus trip staying at our hotel. My husband spent the evening socializing with the seniors!
Through it all we were happily married for 31 years. My husband fondly told that story until the day he died.
Oh, those memories.
I had wished my sweet husband would have informed me, before I got hammered, that the next morning we had a chartered boat to go all day fishing. The morning sun had just crept over the horizon and for some unknown reason they were having difficutly catching bait. So we headed out into the ocean with no bait. But man was it really beautiful. My man by my side, wind blowing through our hair, anticipation of the big catch and then... black smoke. No land in sight and our engine has blown. After an hour, our guide informs us that no help will arrive for another 2 hours to fix the boat but one man did offer to take us to shore. Awsome! until it arrived. The man respectfully spoke no English but he was driving a dingy. O-M-G!!! I am in a sundress, I have so many bags because I have packed for any freakin preceivable emergency...except a blown engine. Well the dingy arrived and being that it was so much lower than the boat I was literally on my belly with one leg latched on one boat and the other foot searching for the other boat.
We were with this man for what seemed like forever. We had to switch boats again in the ocean because he didn't take his dingy to shore. WTH. When we got to shore we literally looked like Mr. and Mrs. Howell getting off of the S.S minow with all our bags. We headed up the beach to a group of men staring at us. Just praying one really was the taxi driver. Needless to say, I wanted to be anywhere than where I was. I was a little more than afraid we might not be making it home. I even wishing I could be sitting next to that 19 yr old booby bearing lush . As we entered this guys van..omg, I kid you not, I watched him throw down the lug nuts he had just stolen off the truck he had been standing by. Since we had no idea where we even at the man just started driving. I was never so happy to see that little hotel room and the bottle of tequila.
Afterwards, my darling husband drove me to a drugstore and bought those instant ice packs and we spent the second afternoon of our honeymoon with me dozing from the pain meds and the ice pack on my knee and my legs elevated on his lap, while he was reading.
I didn't let it slow me down. We moved on to Virginia Beach for the rest of our honeymoon and walked for miles. Went parasailing (would only let us dip our toes so my knee wouldn't get salt water on it), tandem biking, walking and walking - it hurt the whole time & in fact I had it X-rayed after we got back, but I wasn't going to slow us down or miss a minute!
How lovely it was in Virginia Beach - being there without children, just the two of us, staying overnight right near the beach, we were able to enjoy the street musicians (one or more on every block), the fireworks at night, etc. Went to a murder mystery dinner theatre on what turned out to be our last night and it was so much fun.
We came home a day early because my nephew had been terribly injured in Afghanistan and was brought to Walter Reed, where my brother and sister-in-law had now flown in, so I wanted to see him and be with them. But it was a memorable week!
So off to Canada we went with our little homemade fold out camper with a canoe on the top.
We brought along all our food stuffs including frozen ducks that we raised, because we had just enough money for gas.
We traveled to Riding Mountain Nationa Park in Manitoba and then on to Onterio, where we found a nice camping spot by this beautiful lake. It was already getting late in the day, so we decided to make our dinner, by roasting a duck over an open fire along with some side dishs.
Then we realized that we were short on drinking water, so I had to travel out 15 miles to find a outpost to get water and was shocked when I seen that they just pumped it out of the lake.
By the time I got back to our camp site, Kallene was sitting there crying and our duck was laying in the smoldering fire with green grass all over the top of it.
When I asked her what had happened, she explained that a game warden came by and told her we could have an open fire and that she had to put the fire out.
Kallene got excited and dropped the duck intot the fire and then put green grass and water on the fire to put it out. She was sending great smoke signals to everyone.
We went hungry that evening, but decided to catch some fish for breakfeast, which we did.
I left the fish tied to the back of the canoe to keep them alive untill morning when I was going to cook them.
The next morning we got up and I went to get the fish and only to find the Snapping turtles had eaten all of them. I think we ate cold beans or something for breakfeast.
That evening we wanted to bath ourselves, so I went to the lake and brought up water and we took pan baths in the camper only to get lake etch for a couple of days from the lake water. This also happened to be the year that the USA devalued the dollar, so the Canadian money was worth more than ours for the 1st time and believe me, they let us know about it.
Our little wooden homemade camper looked like a outhouse on wheels, when the sides weren't folded down and many people would drive past us and be pointing and laughing at our camper.
Our youngest son had not been walking when we left, but by the time we got back we was and Kallene always told the kids how she hated the trip (our honeymoon).
We had many a good laughs about it, only she did not think it was as funny as I did.
Wish we were still camping together Kallene.
I love and miss you so much sweetheart.
We went to Disney World for our honeymoon... and it was perfect... :O)
Except.... we were up all night the night before searching for our marriage license. That's when I discovered he couldn't follow simple instructions... :O) It was POURING down rain on our wedding day, but the sun popped out JUUST as I started walking down the isle... H sent a rose to the bride's room that never arrived... Not sure who stole my ROSE.... :O(
After we got married, we flew to Florida, our plane landed late, the rental car "bus" was over an hour late, and then once we got the car, we got lost driving to the hotel.. LOL...Once we arrived, we wished we hadn't found the it!! It was AWFUL!
Once we got up to the room at 2:30a.m. we were both exhausted from lack of sleep the night before and just fell into bed exhausted only to be rudely awakend at 3:50 by the smoke detector... H got up, looked around, came back and put his boot on, took the smoke detector off the wall, smashed the inside with his booted foot, put it back up on the wall, took off his boot and fell back into bed beside me... where we.. well, you know.... :O) After that we went to the park walking around like zombies...
That night, we thought we'd have a romantic evening so we ordered room service... Steak and baked potatoes... YUMMMMM
It arrived in a Styrofoam container, with a plastic fork... No knife, no butter - NOTHING... LOL...
Oh well, who needs food when you're living on love, right??? :O)
It was the BEST honeymoon ever! I was married to the man I loved more than my own life.. what more could a girl want???
Then we went to Old Orchard Beach in Maine for three days. We stayed at a beautiful expensive hotel with a gym and pool. I woke early every morning and worked out at the gym. I have always been an early bird. We went and walked along the ocean there too and had random people take pictures of us. I ate fresh Maine Lobster for the first time there. IT was the most heavenly honeymoon.
Of course I won't talk about all the running around in our Birthday suits at the hotel everywhere we went. One of the best parts about being away from our huge family was that we could close the curtains and be totally naked the entire time we were in our hotel rooms.
The entire honeymoon was so fun and carefree. Thank you for the reminder of some of the best memories of my life.
hugs...
-Diana