Love & devotion

My Darling reads the Herald newspaper everyday, in every imaginable place, on his iPhone. It drives me crazy sometimes. Except when he sends me interesting human interest tidbits like this…

Devoted widower to rejoin wife

A man who sat at his wife’s grave for almost 20 years through storms, heatwaves and howling winds from dawn to dusk has died.

Rocky Abalsamo will now be reunited with his beloved wife, Julita, who died in 1993 after 45 years of marriage. He will be buried on her left, the side he walked alongside her when she was alive, the Boston Globe reported.

He only left Julita’s grave site when St Joseph Cemetery in West Roxbury, Boston, was closed. Then he would sprinkle crumbs across the plot so chipmunks would keep her company when he could not.

Rocky, who was 97 when he died, rose to prominence in 1990 when his vigil became known. He told the Boston Globe “She is part of me, so here I am whole. Being here makes me feel better. Not good, but better. I do it for Julita, and for myself.”

He sat beside his wife’s grave in a blue beach chair, calling out, “I am here”, when he sat down. On her birthday each year he would toast her with a glass of cider. Every night he left, Rocky would rub his finger on her name on the red granite stone. The ritual left an indelible mark.

He always carried a photograph of his wife. On the back of the image, Julita had written: “Today the sky smiles to me. I see you. You look at me. Today I believe in God. With all my love, Julita.”

The couple met in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1937 and married a year later. They followed their children to the US in 1971.

As Rocky’s story became widely known, he began to receive visitors at the grave who would bring him meals and gifts.

What an incredible bond. When I googled to find some more photos of the couple I stumbled on a hysterically titled site Confessions of a Funeral Director which the story was featured in as well. I thought the post Hippos Kill More People than Sharks and other Useless Death Data was the best… and this one I found… we all know the beautiful Ryan Gosling movie the Notebook (sadly James Garner who played the loving and devoted husband died last month)…

The real Notebook

Kenny and Helen Felumlee were introduced when they were teenagers – by Kenny’s ex-girlfriend. After dating for two years, the couple decided to get married. Immediately. Even though Kenny was only two days shy of his 21st birthday – the legal age for men in Ohio at the time – the pair drove to Kentucky to elope. They married on February 20, 1944, and spent the next 70 years together.

The couple raised eight children with Helen staying at home while Kenny worked for the railroad as a car inspector, ran a automobile repair place, and even carried mail for the town of Nashport. Helen was known for sending personalized greeting cards for any and every event, causing her family to joke that she “kept Hallmark in business.”

Once all their children had left home, the Felumlees travelled around the United States by bus. They preferred that mode of transportation so they could see everything along the way.

According to their children Kenny and Helen never spent a night apart even preferring to share a bunk bed rather than sleeping in separate beds on a trip. When Kenny became too ill to sleep in the bedroom, Helen slept on the floor nearby so they could stay together.

Helen Felumlee died on April 12, 2014 at the age of 92. Kenny Felumlee died 15 hours later on April 13, 2014 at the age of 93.

I’m sure there are millions more stories like this of unconditional love and devotion. I hope yours is one of them. I know mine is.

(My Darling – you know I have issues with graveyards though! xxx)

Keep calm and hire a wedding planner

As you know my career is event co-ordination and party planning. So I thought it would be a cake walk planning my own wedding. But even for someone with a high level of corporate skills – don’t be fooled – planning your own wedding is a highly charged emotional rollercoaster! The sensible thing to do is to hire a wedding planner. I believe they can be hired for minimal charge nowadays and will end up saving you $$$ in the long run. They will stop you from becoming bridezilla (which is inevitable), by making decision making easy, recommending the best suppliers and keeping your wedding party under control (which I desperately needed on my big day).

I read this fantastic article in M2 Women today by Kellie Stevenson and it reminded me of exactly what major effort is involved in making your big day perfect. Have a read it is hysterically funny and true to life…
The Best Laid Plans? With the likes of Pinterest sprouting ‘easy’ ways to plan and create the perfect wedding, Kellie thought she had it covered, that is until what is involved in the rigmarole of wedding planning became apparent…

I am getting married and have decided that planning a wedding is hard. Wouldn’t it be great if there were people who actually did all that for you for a pre-arranged sum of money? People who planned weddings for a living? Unfortunately, my inability to work out what such professionals could possibly be called, couple with my innate need to make life difficult, means that I have decided to take on the undertaking myself.

There are so many moving parts, things I hadn’t considered and have not a skerrick of interest in. For instance, I had no idea what the difference is between satin and grosgrain ribbon (although grosgraine sounds like a raging STD mixed with a terrible headache). Raffia and hemp twine. Same? Different? Bothered? I don’t know, but I am tempted to hang myself with either or both if confronted by too many more of these decisions. I had no an inkling that your font choice could impact the quality of your nuptials and that using something like Comic Sans says, clearly as yelling from the roof tops, my wedding is a farce and I am an empty shell posing as a bride.

Apparently, a theme for the day is of the utmost importance. If you believe Pinterest, and by God who wouldn’t, it seems more important than the choice of say…groom. There are so many to choose from, relaxed meets classic rustic meets bucolic urban Mexican swing dance, it’s all there for the uninitiated to blunder through.

The theme du jour seems to be retro/vintage, laden with preserving jars, gingham bunting and all that hessian. I never thought to draw correlation between heavy sacking and a wedding but apparently, it’s what all the cool kids are doing. According to the wedding magazines (full of models that look like child brides and lots and lots of hessian) it’s all about being timeless. A mental image of me in a mildewing bridal gown swooning around a cobweb-filled room, Miss Havisham style.

Anyway we took this theme thing on board but have decided that the only thing we can find that ties all the elements of the day together is that we are getting married. We have decided on a wedding-themed wedding.

The wedding magazines, along with making you feel chunky make it all look so easy, they lull you into a false sense of security that all you need is a mason jar, four tea lights and an old typewriter.

But what you really need is… a wedding planner!