I admit, as real as life is and can be, I am a hopeless romantic.
My eyes leak during heart-touching movies, and books. I sniffle when I hear of the spouse of an elderly person passing away, I sniff at weddings, and I love to have couples tell how they met or how they got engaged. Quite simple I am mush on the inside.
As I was cleaning and purging this summer I came across an article that I had clipped from the local newspaper way back when I was just seventeen.
Dated November 12, 1986 (and now you are computing my age … tsk, tsk!), the article is titled “Couple Married, Buried in Same Ceremony.” Certainly a title that could attract the eyes and attention of a teenage girl!
It is a story from Tallahassee, Florida, and the story comes from the funeral for the young couple.
Apparently, Mike Ellis and Toni Goff were engaged to be married. They had met with Rev. Rayburn Blair once for premarital counselling. Then, just fifteen days later, the plane that Mike was flying crashed, sending both into eternity.
At the burial, Rev. Blair officiated, not a burial but a wedding service. He said, ” I’m perfectly at ease in performing this ceremony of holy matrimony, because I heard them already say yes.”
As a teenage girl, this story went straight to my heart …
a young couple planned to wed
they died before their vow exchange
the person officiating their burials knew their joy-filled intent enough to make it a focal point of an otherwise grief-focused ceremony
Is it what the couple would have wanted? No … they would have wanted to be married before they died, but this unorthodox, even romantic, burial might have given hope to their families … and that is what that couple may have desired.
itsawonderfilledlife 