My happy ending --

The theme over at "Another Day, Another Diaper" (great blog title) today is "transportation," and in searching for an appropriate photo to link up, I came across this old one of my son:

 [Linkup to Theme Thursday]

I love this picture, which was taken by his cousin Aubree while we were in Florida for a very happy occasion:  the wedding of Ed and me in 2006 (while I didn't take the picture, I did give it its Miami Vice treatment).  We were married in Florida because Ed's mother, 96 years of age and still in her own house, lived there, and we wanted her to share the day with us.  My sister, Deb, came down from Minnesota with Aubree, and our children, Devin and Grace, came from California with us, so it was a very small but happy event.

I had arranged things over the internet with a non-denominational minister, who looked into our being able to be married at a nice park, in a gazebo overlooking a small lake, made the dinner reservations for us, and told us all we needed to do.  We had one other guest -- an elderly man with whom Ed played tennis during the time that he had lived in Florida, near his mom.  Joe walked over from the tennis courts to join us.  We also had some observers, skateboarding kids whom the minister shooed off the steps leading up to the gazebo, so we could have our little ceremony.  They retreated to a picnic table nearby and waited patiently for us to be finished.

Aside from the fact that it was a very windy day, all went off without a hitch but with many smiles and tears.  We went to a lovely place for dinner, where Ed (a chef for many years) took pictures of each person's dinner plate, but not a single picture of the wedding party.  Something to laugh about at this point . . . 

I stand as living proof that life is not over even if  you find yourself divorced at the age of 55 -- you can find true love and happiness, if you just make the leap and take some steps toward making yourself happy.  By deciding that I would rather be 55 years old and alone for the rest of my life than continue in an unhappy marriage, I opened myself up to finding a wonderful man and a having very happy ending.