Thirty Years, Still Ours—A Story of Marriage, Grief, and Enduring Love
A look at the vows we kept, the dreams we carried, and the love that remains after loss.
Morning light hits the plaque Greg made, the way it always does—soft, golden, almost holy.
It hangs on our bedroom wall exactly where he placed it years ago, the surprise he crafted with his own hands. He carved the words, painted each letter, stained the wood, and framed it with the kind of quiet devotion only he possessed.
A few days before he gave it to me, he’d asked me to write our initials on a sheet of paper. I didn’t think anything of it. Now I know he traced my handwriting into the wood—my letters, his hands—our marriage etched into something meant to outlast us both.
When we get to the end of our lives together,
the house we had, the cars we drove,
the things we possessed won’t matter.
What will matter is that I had You,
and You had Me. — TGK + JLK
It’s the first thing I see every morning, a quiet truth carved into wood—
love over everything,
love above everything,
love through everything.
Three Decades of Us
Thirty years.
Let that sink in.
Technically, after our anniversary last year in 2025, we had officially stepped into our 30th year of marriage—and I count every single second of it.
Thirty years of marriage, and thirty‑two years of doing life side‑by‑side.
If you had told twenty‑something‑year‑old me that we’d make it three decades, I would have been deeply impressed—and also very concerned about our 90s fashion choices.
Grief has a way of turning the calendar into a battlefield.
Dates don’t slip by unnoticed; they rise up like ghosts.
People outside of our club often assume that when a spouse dies, the countdown stops. They think anniversary dates quietly retire to the back of the mind, gathering dust like a fancy china set you never use.
Except...
They don't.
September 7th
September 7th, 2026 would have been our 30th wedding anniversary.
And let me tell you right now:
I am going to celebrate it.
I will celebrate it until the day I draw my last breath.
Because we did it.
We honored the vows.
We stayed married, we stayed true, and we stayed faithful through every twist, turn, and messy season life threw at us.
In a world where everything has an expiration date—including milk and good mascara—we built something permanent. Death changed the shape of my life, but it doesn't get to rewrite history.
Beginnings
I’ve been thinking a lot about beginnings lately—right back to how he managed to hook me in the first place.
I remember the morning of our wedding so clearly. I was a bundle of nerves—checking lists, fixing details, making sure every single thing was nailed down before our afternoon ceremony.
Meanwhile, Greg…
went fishing.
At the time, I was annoyed in that classic pre‑wedding, everything‑must‑be-perfect way. But now? Now I look back and smile. Because that was the essence of my sweet, calm, country boy. While I was spinning in circles trying to control every detail, he was out by the water, steady as ever, doing the thing that always grounded him.
It was our first lesson in marriage:
I brought the fire, he brought the calm.
And somehow, it worked for thirty years.
Greg’s marriage proposal was an absolute, total surprise. He even managed to buy my ring right out from under my nose from one of my co‑workers at Kay Jewelers. On Christmas Eve, at my parents' house in front of my entire family, he got down on one knee and asked. I’ll never forget my grandma Aline’s reaction: She threw her hands straight up in the air and exclaimed, “Praise Jesus!”
If there is one thing I’ve always possessed, it’s a fiercely calibrated good‑guy radar—and Greg wasn’t just a good guy; he was the gold standard. Finding one of the true, genuinely good ones in this wild world is like winning a cosmic lottery, and landing him remains the greatest gift of my life.
Because the magic
of loving Greg
wasn’t just how wonderful
he was on his own;
it was the way his
steady, unshakeable heart
brought out
the absolute best in me.
And decades later, Greg never stopped finding ways to surprise me.
For our 20th wedding anniversary, he had a ring made for me—a combination of three different anniversary bands all soldered together, because he said the one in the middle just wasn’t enough. With Avery’s help, he completely surprised me with it in 2016, then took me out to dinner for our anniversary. I will forever wear it.
I’d dropped a few gentle hints that a diamond tennis bracelet would make a perfect 30th‑anniversary gift, and I have no doubt he was quietly plotting to make that happen.
The Unlived Plans
Of course, the unlived plans have a funny, heartbreaking way of showing up right alongside the memories.
Greg and I had big plans for this year. We were finally going to do the ultimate all‑inclusive trip to St. Lucia—a place neither of us had ever set foot on. We had picked out the Jade Mountain Resort, the kind perched high on a lush green cliffside with a jaw‑dropping infinity pool that seemed to spill right over the edge into the impossibly blue Caribbean Sea.
We talked about standing there at sunset, looking out at the twin peaks of the Pitons rising straight out of the water, wrapped in wisps of tropical mist.
We were going to trade our everyday reality for that view, absolute peace, and each other. We talked about it like it was a guaranteed chapter waiting for us.
I can still picture it:
Too much wine for me.
A massive, perfect medium-rare steak for Greg.
And the two of us ending up tangled together in the warm water of that infinity pool under a blanket of stars, completely weightless and entirely in our own world.
Instead, grief left its metaphorical luggage sitting right in the middle of the hallway.
If you’ve ever had to look at an untouched itinerary or stare down a dream vacation that turned into a “someday” that never came, you know the exact brand of whiplash I’m talking about. It’s infuriating. It feels entirely unfair to hold memories of a place you never got to breathe in together.
Eleven Months
And here’s the part that hits like a blade:
September 3rd marked eleven months since Greg died.
335 days without him in my life.
Eleven months of living in a world he’s not in.
Eleven months of carrying a love that stayed while the man who made it possible didn’t.
It’s the kind of milestone that doesn’t whisper—
it crashes in,
brutal and uninvited,
reminding me exactly what was taken.
But here is what I’m learning: the deep desire to go there, the quiet intimacy of sharing those dreams in the dark, and the fierce, enduring love that inspired them—that actually happened.
The trip didn’t happen, but the romance between us was as real as it gets.
It still is.
What Remains
September 7th isn’t just about looking backward at the thirty years behind us; it’s about carrying the echoes of the places we meant to go and the promises we still keep in our hearts.
So here is to the thirty years we got, the vows we honored, and the dream we never reached but loved anyway.
Death may have changed the ending of our story,
but it never changed its truth.
If you ever stand by that infinity pool overlooking the Pitons, raise a quiet toast for us.
Because in the end, we lived the vow we spoke on our wedding day—til death do us part—and somehow, even now, the love remains.
And Greg’s words still echo through every corner of my life:
“Stick with me…
I’ll take care of ya!”
And he did.
Faithfully.
Fiercely.
Without fail.
For three decades.
Thirty years, still ours. And in the quiet places where grief softens, he finds me. Not in the big moments, but in the small ones—those ordinary flashes of memory that feel like a hand on the small of my back.
Sometimes it’s the ring he surprised me with.
Sometimes it’s the way he’d look at me across a room.
And sometimes—more often than I ever expect—it’s his voice. That deep, playful Josh Turner rumble he’d drop into just to make me quiver, singing “Your Man” like I was the only woman in the world worth serenading.
I can still hear it. Clear. Warm. Close.
A love song that was never about the radio—it was about us.
And maybe that’s the truest part of grief:
The way love keeps singing
long after the music stops.
A Note from Jen
If you’re reading this and carrying your own dates—the anniversaries, the birthdays, the diagnosis days, the last‑breath days—I want you to hear me clearly: whatever those milestones stir up in you is valid. Grief doesn’t care about tidy timelines or polite behavior. It shows up loud. It shows up early. It shows up even when you think you’ve braced yourself.
Some of you mark your dates with rituals—lighting a candle, visiting a gravesite, cooking their favorite meal. Some of you spend the day in bed because standing upright feels like too much. Some of you celebrate the love that was lived. Some of you grit your teeth and get through the day minute by minute. And some of you do a strange mix of all of the above.
There is no wrong way to honor what mattered.
Milestones don’t stop mattering just because the person is gone. They’re proof that love existed, that life was shared, that something beautiful once took up space in your world. And if those dates still knock the wind out of you, it’s only because your heart remembers what your calendar refuses to forget.
So whatever your next milestone is—whether it’s tomorrow or months away—I hope you give yourself permission to meet it honestly. Cry if you need to. Celebrate if you want to. Ignore the day entirely if that’s what feels safest. You get to decide how to carry your story.
And if you ever need someone to sit with you in the thick of it, you’ve got me—and this community—right here.
❤️