Ideal love does exist, I know it does. Though the story started before I was born, eventually I witnessed part. It was 1957 and she was sixteen. Della had eight brothers and sisters. Her house in Flatwoods, KY was getting so crowded that she went to live with her aunt in Huntington, WV. She thought of it as her responsibility since she was one of the eldest children, so it was not a big deal to her. As they arrived in Huntington her aunt’s car, she felt no excitement about the place that would now be her home.
She looked around the neighborhood. It was a little house, like many in the neighborhood with a big field across the street. She was nothing out of the ordinary, until she saw him.
Glen was an attractive sixteen-year-old guy, who was working in a yard across the street from Della’s new home. When Della say his muscular physique, dark hair, and mysterious eyes, she couldn’t help but ask her aunt who he was as she looked out the window at him. Her aunt told her that he was the son of one of her friends and lived in the little brick house across the street from them. Della could barely conceal her excitement. She now loved her new home.
A couple of days after she had settled in, Della’s aunt was planning to take her to meet some of the neighbors, but there was only one whom Della wanted to meet. It felt as though they walked around the world before they got to the little brick house across the street. Della and her aunt knocked on the door and were invited in by Glen’s mother. Della looked around, but she didn’t see him anywhere. He wasn’t home. Della was crushed. On the way home, she never looked up from the ground in front of her.
The next day, Della was alone in her room until her aunt told her that she had a visitor. Della had no clue as to who it could have been. She slowly came down the stairs, still puzzled . . . When she got to the living room, she could have fainted. Standing in the doorway was Glen, holding a single, red rose. As Della walked towards him, he held out the rose and said that he was sorry that he missed her the night before and that he really wanted to meet her. She had never smiled so big in her life.
From that day, they were always together. By the next year, they were married and living out on their own. Their life together was a perfect one. It was filled with more love than I could hope to have and pure joy. The only thing that could make it even more wonderful happened. In 1960, Glen and Della welcomed twin girls into their lives and eleven years later, another daughter. Their future included four grandchildren. I just happen to be the second of those grandchildren. I could not say how many times I have heard this story throughout my life. I can’t remember a time when my grandparents weren’t smiling when they were together or even a time when they were apart. On Easter, my cousins, my brother, and I would go to their house. While we were hunting eggs, my grandparents would sit on their back porch swing, holding hands as they watched us running through the yard.
When he was fifty-three, my grandfather was diagnosed with lung cancer, that eventually spread to his brain. Seeing the heartache in her eyes as she cared for him the last year of his life, never once leaving his side as he went to various hospitals, or enduring chemotherapy and radiation treatment, has truly impacted me. Because of their wonderful life together, it was even more difficult for my grandmother even more when my grandfather died of cancer eight years ago.
I have hoped all of my life to find a love like that. And I believe that I have. Even though my special someone and I have had a few fights, I believe that our bond is just as strong. My grandparents showed me how a marriage should be. They never argued, just talked differences civilly. And when times got hard, they stood by each other to the very end and never gave up faith that things would work out. They never took advantage of their time together, and they enjoyed every minute of it.
But this was the first thing that came to my mind when I read the words “ideal love.” I know that it has been a long time, but the story still brings tears to my eyes, even as I am writing this.