My love story turned out to be for life

It was basketball season in my home town, Benton, Illinois. I was a fourteen year old freshman at my high school. The girl I fell in love with was a beautiful, tall young lady who was thirteen.

A friend and I had just played in the freshman/sophomore basketball game. After our shower, we decided to stay and watch the varsity game. Just by luck, the only seats available were directly behind a young lady and her girl friend. I didn't pay much attention to them, until she turned around to congratulate me for my 12 point game, which we won by one point. When she turned to talk to me, I immediately fell in love.

As we talked, I felt afterward, she would have nothing else to do with me. I discovered she was a sophomore, one grade above me, and way out of my league. After talking for awhile, close to the end of the varsity game, I somehow gathered the nerve to ask if I could walk her home. She only lived a short distance from the gym. Much to my surprise and happiness, she said yes. We walked and talked and when we reached her house, we stood and talked until her mother called her inside. My house was quite a distance from hers but I didn't care, I walked about six inches above the sidewalk all the way home.

She wore a perfume that remained on my hands until the next day. I didn't wash them until I got out of bed the next morning. We saw each other again, the next day at school. We stood and talked in the hallway, until a grouchy teacher ordered us, three times, to go to our classrooms. I told my friend, I'm going to marry that girl.

I kissed her for the first time, about three weeks after we met. After that kiss, to my surprise, She looked at me and said, "It's about time you did that, I was beginning to think you didn't want to kiss me, or I had bad breath." After that first kiss, they came like raindrops. We started our romance in the fall of 1952. It never ended until her death on April 20th, 2015, 1:40 pm. Our love never stopped once during all those years. I was the first for her and she for me. We didn't separate once during all those years, until she moved to heaven.

She was not only the woman I love, but also my best friend. I'm alone now, but I have the memories of all those wonderful years. I realize she wasn't perfect, however; if she had a flaw, she hid it from me, To this day, I can feel her moving around in bed. I still ease myself out of bed so I won't disturb her. Now I am eighty two, so it won't be too long before we're together again. We were blissfully married for sixty wonderful years and went steady From October 1952 until May twelfth 1956, when we married. She was God's greatest gift to me.