Not an Ordinary Guy

By Bernadette A. Moyer

I don’t think that I am easily impressed, partly because I have high standards and mostly because I expect so much from myself. It takes a lot to impress me! Yet today while at the grocery store my husband and life partner of 23 years did just that!

What did he do, you ask? As I purchased a sugar free tea and stated I needed to walk to the coffee counter for a packet of sugar substitute, he opened up his wallet and pulled out a single pack of the kind of sugar substitute that I use. And what makes this so impressive? It is not something that he personally uses. He had it in there just for me.

Then we joked about how much he loves me and how many things that he does for me. All the little ways that he shows his love and this is exactly what attracted me to him in the first place.

We met the day that he buried his wife, she was only 29 years old and they had just had twins, a son and a daughter. I was asked by the mother-in-law who was my friend and a colleague as we were both Realtors in the same office. They needed a babysitter so the entire family could attend the viewings and the funeral. It was Easter Sunday of 1992. I had heard so much about them and the twins that they were expecting and then I heard about all her many health issues as a result of the pregnancy. Once the babies were delivered 8-weeks pre-maturely she soon went into a comma and never awakened before her death.

What struck me about Brian when I met him was that he looked like an ordinary guy. He loved sports was an avid music fan and had a regular job as a Civil Servant with the City of Baltimore. But once I had the opportunity to get to know him I found out that he was NOT an ordinary guy, not at all. He has character and drive and determination. He does the right thing.

His wife died and he was faced with being a single parent to pre-mature twins, a son and a daughter and he never once thought about NOT raising them himself. Even if that meant he would go it alone. Easily he could have hidden behind his grief and passed them off to his mother or to her mother and yet it never even occurred to him to do that. That impressed me.

He was always there for them, when they had developmental delays and health challenges and when they struggled and when they succeeded, he was there. Just as he has been there for me for 23 years now.

It truly is the little things that I love about him, he is a tough guy with pride but will show me his most tender and loving side. He cares about me and he loves me like no one else ever has, when my family did the things that they did to try and hurt me and bring me down, he was fighting mad. And wanted to engage and fight them. I’ll never forget how upset he was when I was excluded from my mother’s obituary, he said, “If your dad was still alive, they wouldn’t have been able to get away with that. They have no class.” I was stunned because he rarely speaks ill of the people in our lives until or unless he has something serious and strong to communicate.

His love has healed so many of my hurts. His support and his unwavering hold of my heart still warms my heart so. I love watching him do the many tasks around our home and interacting with our adult son and our two precious pooches.

My husband doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve but by his actions he shows what a caring person that he is and that although he may appear to be “ordinary” there is nothing ordinary about the depth of his love, caring and commitment.

#feelingthelove

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer