"I don’t remember your hand being so small," he commented as he reached for my arm and engulfed his hand in mine.
"It’s the same size it’s always been," I replied.
We were walking down the church aisle. Jerry had moved back to Michigan two years previous returning to his job at Burroughs Corporation and now living in a rented house in Royal Oak, Michigan. Son, Tom, graduated from high school, had returned with him.
And here we were:
Time: 5:00 p.m., October 19, 1984, rehearsal of son John’s wedding.
Place: Franklin, Tennessee
It is now twenty-nine years since that event, seven years longer than our marriage of twenty-two years and five years since his passing in 2008.
His comment that evening – and any time since that the memory surfaces – wrenches my heart as I think of the significance of his comment and the thought and emotion that always surface in my own heart and mind.
Yes . . . my small hand in yours, Jer. I was small; you were big. And strong. At least on the outside. On the inside, not so much. But I didn’t understand that when we were married.
If I had . . .
Instead, as always, the memory of this seemingly casual exchange wrenches and squeezes my heart in painful remembrance and I wonder . . .
If I had . . .
maybe you would have . . . protected . . .
defended . . .
cherished . . .
that small hand . . . and the person attached to it.
