Some dates you NEVER forget

Birthdays and anniversary dates become ingrained forever in your brain.

Today is one such day.

Nineteen years ago the 7th May was a Saturday, it was our wedding day. The sun shone, although maybe not quite as brightly or as warmly as it was today, I remember a light drizzle in the morning and some clouds.

May 7th 1994

I had no idea when I made my vows that less than twenty years later the “til death do us part” bit would already be fulfilled.

I can honestly say I can’t remember many anniversaries in between; Andrew rarely made a fuss of our special day. He will have been away working for about a third of them anyway.

But today, 7th May 2013 I will always remember. 

I was rudely woken at 1 a.m. by a loud noise; a huge chunk of plaster had fallen from the kitchen ceiling. It was inevitable really with the amount of water that has poured down the walls over the past couple of days and it’s all going to get worse before it gets any better.

the ceiling last night - just a bit of water damage!

oops-a-daisy - all fall down!

“Better or worse” now there’s another line from the wedding vows.

How seriously do we take them? Well I know we do take them seriously but we don't believe the bad bits will ever happen!

In fairytales the wedding is the beginning of the Happy Ever After. In reality that’s where the hard work begins.

When I got up early this morning to clear up the mess (I really couldn’t face it in the middle of the night) I wondered if my fairytale was going backwards, I’d had the wedding and now I was back being Cinderella before the ball.

Maybe it’s all too easy to get sucked into self-pity. 

I Tweeted and Facebooked what had happened and got some wonderful comments back from friends. Prayers and virtual hugs made me smile and have carried me through the day.

But as the sun sets my thoughts are taken back all those years ago to the day when the words “death” and “part” and “worse” seemed so vague and the only words that truly mattered were 

“I LOVE YOU”

With all my messages of support perhaps I have discovered on this special day that they still are the most important.