Love Letters From the Grave

During the first few years of their marriage they visited Jesse and Aunt Dolores two or three times a month, but gradually their visits became less frequent, as they became more and more involved with their small-town lives. Unfortunately, during their seventh year of marriage, Aunt Dolores had a stroke, and within six months she had another one which caused her to be confined in a care facility. Because he was left alone in his large house, Jesse decided to retire from being County Sheriff at the end of his elective term, which was less than two years hence. During these times, George and Molly visited as often as they could, aiding Jesse with making decisions and plans for a retirement without Aunt Dolores, and helping him to make out his will.

Two months before Aunt Dolores was placed into the care of a nursing home, another tragedy occurred: Molly's brother-in-law, Angus, suddenly died of a heart attack. Fortunately for Maureen, three of her four sons were gone from the home - two of them married and raising families of their own, and the third one serving in the Navy. Only her youngest son was still living at home, and he was attending college part-time and working part-time. Angus was self-employed, and, therefore, did not have a retirement income, leaving Maureen with only a relatively small amount of life insurance. However, she also inherited Angus' half of their home, leaving her as the sole owner of the property.

At the time, Maureen was already helping her father, Molly and George to take care of Aunt Dolores, so it made sense all around that, as soon as Angus was buried and his will was probated, she should put her house up for sale and she and her son should move in with Jesse and Aunt Dolores. She was there to make nearly all of the arrangements for Aunt Dolores' move into the nursing home, and essentially replaced her in taking care of Jesse and the property. Maureen was still relatively young and seemingly in good health, so Molly was very pleased that she moved in with their father.

During the first four years of their marriage, George and Molly frequently rode their motorcycles, mostly on weekends when the weather was good, touring around the area within a 100-mile radius of their home. They visited scores of small towns within this area, walking around the courthouse squares, visiting antique and novelty stores, museums and other historic and natural history facilities, and enjoying meals in outstanding restaurants - especially those featuring "home cooking." Sometimes they ventured further from home to visit unique places, staying overnight in quaint hotels or small bed and breakfasts. Molly very much enjoyed these excursions and gradually became quite skilled in riding her Indian. They also attended six or more races a year. Try as she may, however, she never became enthusiastic about motorcycle races, unlike George, who remained as enamored as he had been for many years before marrying Molly.

After four years of marriage, George began to climb the corporate ladder. By their eighth year of marriage, he had been promoted to an executive vice president position, requiring him to make frequent out of town trips. He simply did not have the time to do many of the things they’d enjoyed during the earlier years of their marriage or the energy to do the things he did when he was younger. Quite frankly, Molly didn’t mind. She did not miss the motorcycle riding, especially not going to the races.

In fact, she was beginning to feel that she could do without much of the frivolity that had characterized their early years together – though without it, she wasn’t quite sure who they would be as a couple.

George was true to his word about traveling to interesting places of the world during a two-week vacation every year, and as promised, they often included Jesse and Aunt Dolores on the trips. At the start of their second year of marriage they took a two-week summer vacation to Arizona, Utah and Nevada. The third ‘honeymoon’ was divided into two parts. First, they treated Jesse and Aunt Dolores to a five-day Caribbean cruise, where they visited the Virgin Islands, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the Bahamas, and then they took a second cruise by themselves, spending two days in the Bahamas, and then visiting the Grand Caymans, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, before ending up in Havana, Cuba.

As the cruise had been such a success, they repeated it during their third year. It became probably the greatest highlight of Jesse's and Aunt Dolores' lives. Later in the year, during the third week of October, the four of them took another cruise: five-days of cruising along the coasts of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, with stops at Boston, Portsmouth and Bar Harbor and on into the Bay of Fundy, along the coasts of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, with a final stop at Yarmouth. The cruise turned out to be extra special, because the foliage colorations of the forests that particular autumn was among the best in history.

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