Through all these years, through all the work and teaching and quiet accumulation of expertise, another story was unfolding.
I had joined the Air Force to support my family after my father's heart attack. That commitment never ended. Even after my siblings graduated, found their jobs, married, and moved away, I remained. As the eldest son, I took on the role of caregiver for my aging parents.
After father passed on, I continued to care for my mum, to be present, to fulfill the role I had accepted so many years before.
It wasn't easy staying single all those years.
My mother, like mothers everywhere, would often bring up the subject of starting my own family. Gently at first, then more persistently as the years passed. She worried. She wondered. She hoped.
I would just smile and tell her, "When it comes, it comes."
And then, in my early forties, it came.
Through the help of a friend, I got to know this wonderful woman. Her name was Bernice. She was kind, intelligent, patient—all the qualities one hopes for in a life partner. We connected in ways I hadn't expected, hadn't even realized I was missing.
A little late, perhaps. Most people start families earlier. Most people have decades together before retirement approaches.
But as they say: better late than never.
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