hat was my mindset all throughout my high school years, and most of college. Right up until my junior year. I was attending Clemson University at the time, and most morning I would head down to the village coffee shop to grab a scone before heading off to class. On this one particular day, I headed into the coffee shop and decided to sit down and relax for a bit, considering I had woken up earlier than usual. I ordered my scone and a cup of coffee, I began to read the daily paper that was provided at the checkout line, when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a man standing there. It was Frank Doufront, a fellow junior at my college. He was rather goofy-looking. He had thickly tousled brown hair and a boyish grin, and always wore this pair of thick-rimmed glasses that made him look like a mosquito. Whenever my girlfriends and I would walk around campus, I’d always see him. He’d often stare at me and I’d stare back, although we never said much, until then at least.

“Can I help you?” I asked him in a bit of a snarky tone.

“Actually Mam’, I was going to ask you the same thing. You see, everyday on my way to class, I see you with your gals. All you ever do is stare at me! So here I am, standing in front of you, asking how may I service YOU miss.” he replied.

I was a little stunned at his reply to me at first. I was a bit sassy back then. Maybe even a little rude. But it didn’t bother him, not one bit. I know that because 2 years later we were married. My father thought it was the funniest thing for 5 years ago (give or take a few), I had my heart set on being a life-long bachelorette. Now hear I was, happily married to the man of my dreams.

Frank opened not only my heart, but my mind. He told me once before I married him, “ Ruby, I don’t think you understand how challenging it is to make a life long commitment. It’s not as easy as it looks, like they show you in films and in books. Marriage and love is a challenge. It’s like a very long race. Some are meant to go the whole distance, and others are only meant to go halfway.” I realized my parents were never meant to make it to the end. They forgot the meaning of love and the promise of marriage. They were selfish with each other, and lived off the idea that the whole basis of marriage is on the feeling of love, which it’s not. True love isn’t just a feeling. Same with marriage. True love is a decision and a commitment. When all the feelings and beauty of being “in love” passes away, your left with a kind of love that is unending, and quite different from any other feeling on earth. It took many years but I had finally come to peace with my parents divorce, and I had Frank to thank for that. I understood now where true love came from and how it was built up, but I still didn’t know what exactly it was. I still did not have a definition for it. But in it’s own good time, I knew I would find the answer I was looking for. Someday.

When I was 46 years old, Frank and I hit a rough patch. At the time, both of our kids, Annabeth and Jameson, were in their senior year of high school and were often out doing their own thing like most teenagers. Frank had recently suffered a heart-attack, which was discovered to be the result of a life-long heart condition he had that he never knew about. He was suppose to be taking his medication daily, with absolutely no exercise of any kind or a lot of stress, for it could have triggered another heart attack. Frank was never really the kind of guy to follow the rules. I came home from work one day to hear loud music coming from our basement. I went downstairs to see what all the commotion was about, to see my husband running on the treadmill. I was furious. I walked over to where his boom box was plugged in and ripped it right out the wall. He of corse was yelling at me to bring back down the damn thing. I tuned him out and ignored his requests, and proceeded to the second story of our home and threw it right out the window. We didn’t say a word for 3 days.

On July 13th, I came down stairs that morning at about 8:30 to fix up some breakfast for myself. The kids spent the night at their friends, supposedly discussing plans for their up-coming years in college. I assumed Frank was still asleep, but when I got downstairs he was sitting at our kitchen table with a stack of papers in front of him.

“Goodmorning Rube” he said. I replied accordingly.

I began to cook some eggs and fruit salad for us both. Frank was pretty much silent after that, except for the rustling of his papers. It was the mot we had spoken since Thursday afternoon. All of a sudden he spoke again, and the words that came out of his mouth took me by surprise.

“Rube, we should talk. Please come sit down.” he said. So I walked over to the table and sat across from him. He looked at me long and hard, and then down at his papers. I still had no idea what they were.

“Ruby, I have loved you since I was 19 years old. That is never going to change. But…”

“But what?” I replied. I started to get that feeling of nervousness in the pit of my stomach.

“It’s taken me a long time to realize this. Ruby, Marriage. It isn’t for me.”

“What are you saying…”

“Marriage isn’t for me Ruby.” Those words. They were like teeth digging into my heart. I felt as if a thousand knives had stabbed me all at once. Every single one penetrating my heart. Tears began to well up in my eyes, and the only picture that was in my mind was of my mother all those years ago, clinging to my father as he walked out the door; saying the exact same words that were just said to me. So I got up from my chair, and simply walked out the door without saying another word. I could hear him calling my name asking for me to come back. But I just kept walking. Before I walked out the door, I yelled to him.

“It took you all of 25 years to admit that to me? 25 years? Fine. If that’s what you want, then marriage isn’t for me either.” And I left.

I hopped into the van and started to drive. I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing. That is until I found myself 10 minutes later on my fathers front porch. I rang the door bell, and he came to the door.

“Ruby? What’s going on dear, are you alright?” he asked me. He must’ve seen the tears running down my face and my all to familiar look of pain.

“Dad, can we talk?” and he welcomed me inside.

“Sit down dear sit down. Tell me, why are you crying? Things off on the home front?”


“Dad… he said it. He said those words. The exact ones you said to mom.” He looked at me long and hard, just like Frank did. But then he did something surprising. He smiled. And then he laughed. He asked me if I had even asked him what he had meant, and if I had given him a chance to explain. I realized I hadn’t. I had just walked out. Then he laughed even more.

“Ruby, you are just like your mother. Everytime I would talk, she’d always jump to conclusions without giving me a chance to explain. But you see, things are not always as they appear, or the way they seem. Go back home Ruby. Talk to him without jumping to conclusions. Fix things.” said my father. My dad always knew the right words to say. His advice is still with me to this day.

“Dad, before I go, I need to ask you a question. Please.”

“Alright dear, what is it?”

“What exactly is true love? “ I asked him with tears in my eyes, and he knew what I meant. He smiled at me and said, “Ruby, true love has no definition. It has no explanation. It just is.” And with that, I hugged my father goodbye, hopped back in the car and began to drive home to my husband. I was just about to reach Elm Street when I noticed a massive car wreck on the side of the road. I had never seen anything like it. The car had crashed into a tree and was erupting in flames. Despite the distraction I kept on driving. More than anything I wanted to get home to Frank. I just kept thinking to myself, Frank is my true love. He’s the love of my life, my soulmate. Always has been, always will be.

I finally reached home and bursted through the door. I shouted for Frank, but got no answer. I went down stairs to see if he was working out, but he wasn’t there. I went to the garage to see if he was in there. Maybe he was working on his car I thought, he liked to do that to relieve stress. But when I went in, he wasn’t there, and neither was his car. I got to find him I kept thinking. I wasn’t nervous at the time. Actually, I was rather excited. I wanted to work to fix things with him and work on our marriage. I walked to the end of our driveway to see if I could see his car coming in the distance. There was no car, and Frank was no where to be found.

By nightfall, I still hadn't heard from him. The kids had returned so I had them help me whip up Franks favorite meal, pasta with meatballs and garlic bread. Annabeth set the table for us and Jameson helped me make the meatballs. Just as we were about to put the meatballs in the oven, the door bell rang.

“Annabeth can you get that? It’s probably your father.” I said to my daughter. She walked over to the door, but instead of hearing Franks booming loud and happy voice, I heard murmuring. I assumed it was Ann’s boyfriend or a friend. It wasn’t.

“Mom? What’s going on, the police are here.” yelled my daughter.

“The police?” I thought. What would the police be doing here? I walked over to the door to see two uniformed officers standing in the doorway.

“Excuse me Mrs. Doufront, are you the wife of Frank Doufront?”

“Yes I am, what’s going on?” I replied. At this point, if I knew what was going to happen next, I would have told my kids to go upstairs. But I didn’t know what was about to happen, or what I was about to be told. All I remember hearing is my kids crying and screaming, and the police officer uttering the words “fatal car accident this afternoon.”

I grew lost and withdrawn after that night. For a week I didn’t eat or sleep. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I just slept all day on the couch, doing nothing. I felt nothing, nothing but emptiness. I didn’t speak to anyone. Not even my children. I couldn’t bear to see them in this kind of pain, so I had them stay with my father. Frank died in a car accident, which was caused by a heart attack he suffered a couple minutes after getting into his car. He was on his way to my fathers house, to come find me. I was told that he was found in his car holding a picture of me and him. It was on our wedding day, when he picked me up in his arms and carried me right out of the church with the biggest smile on his face. His death, was my fault. That’s a thought that never left my mind. I couldn’t enter our bedroom for a whole week after his death. I was afraid to be around his scent and his smell, his things. The friday after his death was the first time I decided to enter our bedroom. I walked up the stairs to the hallway, and then proceeded to our door. It was closed, but I noticed something on the floor. It was a flower, and it had been there for awhile for it was nearly dead. I picked it up and held it. I knew Frank had put it there for me. I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and opened the door. When I opened my eyes, what I saw I had no words for. There was a bouquet of flowers in a beautiful vase on the dresser. I walked over to it and noticed a card lying next to the vase. I picked it up and read it out loud:


Marriage isn’t for me. It’s for us.
I love you Ruby.
Always,
Frank.


The massive lump that had been growing in my throat slowly began to release. The tears started falling down my face uncontrollably. I put the note down and picked up the stack of papers Frank had been holding with him, which I had presumed to be divorce papers. It was an article from the Huffington, and the title read “Marriage is not for you.” I began to read it. It tells of a man who was married for just over a year, when he realized that marriage wasn’t for him


“The nearer Kim and I approached the decision to marry, the more I was filled with a paralyzing fear. Was I ready? Was I making the right choice? Was Kim the right person to marry? Would she make me happy?
Then, one fateful night, I shared these thoughts and concerns with my dad.
Perhaps each of us have moments in our lives when it feels like time slows down or the air becomes still and everything around us seems to draw in, marking that moment as one we will never forget.
My dad giving his response to my concerns was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, "Seth, you're being totally selfish. So I'm going to make this really simple: marriage isn't for you. You don't marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn't for yourself, you're marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn't for you. It's not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.” (Smith, Huffington Post).

I reached the end of the article, and a weird feeling crept over me. At first, it was pain. The pain I had held in for so long began to come out. But instead of coming out in tears and in agony, it came out with a smile. The biggest smile I had had on my face in weeks. I had been afraid that Frank no longer wanted to be married to me. But he had. He had always loved me, through everything. Every pain, every smile, every tear, and every challenge we faced throughout our lives, he loved me. Even when he hated me. After reading that article, I assume he had wanted to talk to me about it and explain how he felt, and what we needed to work on. He hadn’t stopped loving me or wanting to be married. He grown to love me in even more ways than before.

His death brought many changes to my life. I grew very depressed and sad, and sometimes I questioned my strength to carry-on the rest of my years alone. But then I would look around at the life we built together. Our beautiful home, our two children who had turned out to be every bit as wonderful as we had dreamed, and a lifetime of love. True love. Frank was the love of my life, as I was his. Since him, there has never been anyone else. Even to this day, 35 years later after his death. I write this now at the end of all things for myself. I was diagnosed with cancer a year ago, and now my time here has ended. But I write this to you all to prove to you a few things. Marriage isn’t for you or me. Marriage is for “we”. Marriage is for the people that you don’t even know of yet, your future children, grandchildren, etc. It’s about wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone for the other person and the future people. For their happiness. Lastly, death doesn’t end a relationship. Death doesn’t end love. “Death is just another path. One that we must take“ (The Lord of the Rings). I don’t know where I’m going now. I don’t know where I’ll be. All I know is that I’m heading to where I’m meant to be. I know that is with Frank. The heavens brought us together. Our love was written in the stars, and that is eternal. All true love is eternal. Goodbye.