I drive to a seniors’ home in rural Alberta.
Turn on the car radio.
Listen to CBC news.
It would seem that the world is in disarray.
Israel and the Hamas are still fighting.
Elsewhere, there is news of death and destruction.
Mother Nature barking and punishing.
Politicians, past and present, behaving poorly.
Nothing happy to report.
It’s all a bit surreal.
Nothing like I’m experiencing on the ground.
It’s all happening out there.
Somewhere else.
Distant.
Like I’m listening to an audio book.
Just fiction.
Today, what is real to me is the story of one of the seniors.
Mary is quite frail.
But she still has an independent free spirit that I adore.
She speaks seldom.
But her eyes light up when I take her hand in mine.
Mary was married four times.
The first was a mistake of youth.
Her second husband passed.
And her third marriage ended in divorce.
But it’s her fourth marriage, when she was in her seventies, that is so remarkable.
Because that last man she married was also her very first lover.
Her teenage lover.
Her teenage fiancé.
But there was something else to do before they would marry.
He went off to war.
There, he had an adventure.
Or misadventure, depending on how you look at it.
It was with another woman.
That woman became pregnant.
He did what he thought was the honourable thing.
He broke off the engagement with Mary.
And he married the pregnant girl.
He lived a full life with that woman in England.
And when she passed, he came back to Canada.
To look for Mary.
He found her through her sister.
After a brief dating period, he and Mary wed.
Finally.
More than five decades after they were first engaged.
And they had three wonderful years together.
Before he succumbed to an illness.
Mary has been on her own again for many years.
She’s outlived two husbands.
Perhaps she doesn’t have much time left herself.
But her life is rich with memories.
And her story will outlive her.
I look out her window.
Across the prairie grasslands.
Thinking of Mary and her latest husband.
An incredible story.
A beautiful story.
Non-fiction at its best.
Better than the news.