REMEMBERING

Have you ever tried to reconstruct a day that you spent many years ago?  This morning, as I sat in my office reading the paper and drinking my coffee, I realized that 61 years ago today I was preparing to start a life that would take me away from all of the familiar things that had comprised a life for me for 18 years.  This was the day I would marry my high school sweetheart, Billy Ramsey Cline.  I was marrying him at Lockeland Baptist Church with the auditorium decorated with dogwood blossoms and white roses, songs to be sung by my friend, George Hulsey, attended by my friends, Nancy Wray, Ann McClanahan, my cousin Billie Rinks and my Maid of Honor Juanita Russell.  My dress was white satin, long sleeves with tiny satin buttons, a long train that was overlaid with lace and I wore a veil attached to a satin cap.  Billy was handsome in a white dinner jacket attended by Jim Ed Clary, Billy Anderton, Dicky Moran and his best man and best friend, Jimmy Fraser.  We were a handsome group of young people.  I say YOUNG PEOPLE because we were all young - way too young to be engaging in such a serious event.  However, we were confident that we knew exactly what we wanted and in spite of all of the discussions with parents about getting married at this time we finally won the fight and the day came in all of it's Spring Splendor.  All of my aunts and uncles were there.  My brother, Ronald, gave me away and I was proud to be walking down the aisle on his arm.  He had always been my protector, my advisor and my friend.  The wedding was just as I had planned and the reception that was held at the Russell home on Cherokee Road was lovely.  Billy and I left for a short trip to Memphis and I thought that my life had just begun and there was no way in the world that anybody could be as happy as I was at that minute.  Well, as great and wonderful as that sounds, life handed me all of the things that is given to everybody.  I found out in record time that I had left a safe, secure, indulgent life for a life I had no way of comprehending.  However, as all stories go I could write the story of my life with Billy and it would probably sound exactly like most people's life.  The ups the downs, the good, the bad.  The happy, the tears.  That, I found out, is life. We are given choices to make and some will be good and some will be not so good.  We had our share of both.  The best of all was our children - Annita, Corinne, Kimberly and Tracey.  The events concerning the years of their childhood and adolescence and adulthood are sometimes a bit blurred in my memory. I remember most, but not all of the minute details,  but they were then and are now the absolute joy of my life.  They are all a combination of Billy and of me.  I can see resemblances of both of us in their physical appearances and in their attitudes and the way that they approach the obstacles and trials in their lives.  I am proud beyond all words to describe these women that are the legacy of Billy and Patsy Cline.  You see, thinking back on that day, April 26, 1952, I was a child going to join my life with another child.  We grew up together.  We learned to walk into the unknown and face whatever came together.  We learned that life was going to be so good that we would wonder just why we deserved all of the blessings we were given and we also learned that devastation can come and it has to be faced and conquered together.  All of the story of Billy and Patsy Cline would make a good, humorous, tear jerking, laughing out loud story but the last page of the book would not end with "they lived happily ever after" because Billy didn't get to go that far but he left me to remember what we had and to enjoy what I have now.  Do I miss him each day?  Yes.  Do I look forward to seeing him in Heaven and telling him the rest of the story?  Absolutely.  I know that this will happen because God has always been so good to me and God is good - all the time.