I want to tell you a love story.
Like all good stories, it begins, ‘Once upon a time in a faraway place…’ Not all stories have happy endings and that’s OK. A love story is after all a story of life.
It was the night of the primary election in March 1976 and the staff of the San Antonio Express-News gathered to report on races from the presidential preferences of Republicans and Democrats and local races. I was waiting on a phone call when I saw a young woman walk by carrying papers to the news desk. She was tall, had short brown hair and green-gold eyes you could fall into. And she smiled and I fell in love.
Over the night, she walked by several times even though my desk was the last one. Later, she went to the snack area behind my desk for a cup of coffee and I joined her. Her name was Ginny Messec, she worked in the reference library and was helping out that night with the election coverage. We talked about … actually I have no remembrance. I mainly looked into her eyes as we talked and I experienced a lightning bolt of realization that this was who I wanted to spend a life with.
Life is messy and there are always complications. My marriage was breaking up and my wife was heading back to Tulsa with our daughter and times were tense.. I didn’t feel it right to bring Ginny into this messed up world. But one night we had supper at her little apartment on Woodlawn and we talked in ways I never had before. She was a farm girl from Frio County who decided early on she wanted to live in this city. We talked late and then kissed. And we never looked back. When hearts merge, you can only go forward.
By late July, we moved in together. In April 1979 we married and were together for 43 years, raising two beautiful sons. We became that sweet old couple who walk down the sidewalk hand in hand and I thought it would go on forever. But I told you there would be no happy endings. In 2018, Ginny was diagnosed with AML – acute myeloid leukemia. It’s a terrible disease but she walked though it head held high through multiple chemo treatments and hospitalizations. That smile that mesmerized me many years ago never faltered, not even after 20 months she told her oncologist she wasn’t going to die in the hospital. I took her home for hospice care on Nov. 27, 2019, she died in her sleep, the dogs and me with her.
Love stories don’t need happy endings to be real. I’d give the world to hear her laugh or see that smile, but love continues and the memories keep her alive for me. I truly believe that as long as we remember our loved ones, they never truly die. That’s pretty close to happily ever after.
S.A. Junk 