Be Mine

I’ve been racking my brain for weeks trying to recollect how Mark and I celebrated Valentine’s Day last year and I Simply. Can’t. Remember. I can recall, clear as day, what we did on our first Valentine’s Day and many of them in between, but I cannot conjure up my memory of our last.

What I do remember about Valentine’s Day 2014 is that Mark tried to send flowers to me at work. I say “tried”, because the flowers never actually got delivered. I arrived home from work that day and he asked me where my flowers were. I laughed, “Ha ha, very funny.” I thought he was kidding because believe it or not, the previous year the exact same thing happened. What are the chances? I thought he learned his lesson the first time after I told him to save the money and buy the flowers at the grocery store. Needless to say he gave the flower delivery thing another shot and was really disappointed, to say the least. I will never forget him on the phone with the florist that night, “You’re seriously offering me 20% off my flowers and you’ll deliver them to the house tonight?? You’ve totally missed the point! You didn’t ruin 20% of my wife’s surprise, you ruined 100% of it!”

I still can’t really recall much else about February 14, 2014. I did some investigating and I think we ordered pizza for dinner. It was Lisa’s, my favorite pizza, so I am certain that Mark let me pick that night. That’s all I came up with. I guess it was just a regular day. Regular days are good though. Maybe if we’d known it would be our last Valentine’s Day we would have made a bigger deal of it. Or maybe not. After days of agonizing I realized that I may never recall the exact events of the day… but I certainly will never forget how Mark always wore his heart on his sleeve with me. How he told me two days after our first date that he was in love with me…How he asked permission the first time he kissed me…How he always supported me, no matter what the endeavor, encouraging me to follow my dreams. How he loved me unconditionally and told me every day, even on our toughest days. How he popped the question two weeks after Valentine’s Day, on February 29, 2004 in the most romantic way… at his apartment, with flowers and candles and photographs of us everywhere…saying, “I really wanted to take you on an over-the-top elaborate vacation but I bought the ring today and I couldn’t wait another minute to spend the rest of my life with you.” Mark, I couldn’t wait either.