Nine Words That Changed My Life Forever

“If I die, I want you to marry again.”

His nine words seared my heart. He meant them to be kind, but they were so unwelcome. We had celebrated our “hello forever” day two years before – why was he saying this now?

Amid his illness, I wanted hope. And a future. With Bill Olson.

Not goodbye.

Wildwood, NJ, 1987

We’d met four years earlier – the summer of 1987 – in Wildwood, New Jersey. He’d come from Wisconsin, with a group of friends.

I came from Florida. Alone.

We were there to share God’s love with perfect strangers as part of a Campus Crusade for Christ summer missions project. We worked full-time jobs during the day, learned to share our faith, and then practiced it at night on Wildwood Beach boardwalks.

One rainy late afternoon, Bill sat beside me on the wrap-around porch of the home the 79 students and staff shared on Maple Avenue. I must have been practicing my technique at engaging perfect strangers in conversations because I turned toward this almost-stranger and drilled him with the survey questions we used.

“If you were to describe yourself in one word, what word would you use?” I asked him, my pen poised to write his answer on the small blue survey card.

“What would you say are the three things you desire most for your life?”

When he responded, I continued until Bill answered each of the seven questions – and then asked me the questions, too.

The conversation that had started as a joke went deep.

It was the beginning of us.

We spent the rest of the summer getting to know each other. We shared encouraging words and what we called B-bonuses (chocolate) and went on creative dates with other couples.

First official date

My favorite was our “formal dinner.” Bill sent me an elaborate invitation with details he wrote in calligraphy – including what to wear (“skirt or nice pants is fine, formal prom dress OK, satin evening dress is not a good idea”).

The 10 of us donned our finest attire. Each man greeted his date on one knee with a single rose. We crammed into 2 small cars and headed to our fine dining experience – at McDonald’s.

We sat at tables decorated with candles, tray liners as placemats, and plastic forks and knives we wouldn’t need. Bill’s best friend, wearing a suit, served us McDonald’s finest.

Bill had addressed his formal dinner invitation to “Sara Sota” (my name was Sara Souders) with “I’ll get your last name right one day” in parentheses.

“Yes, you will,” I thought. “Once we marry and my last name is yours.”

But at the end of the summer project, on August 19, 1987, we parted with a side hug and headed back to our campuses – without ever establishing what “we” were.

Moving forward

We spent the next almost year writing letters back and forth, longing to be together. The following summer, we returned to Wildwood – and, again, said goodbye on August 19. By this goodbye, we were officially a couple.

The next year, we added phone calls and visits to our letter-writing campaigns — and a ring on my finger!

We planned to marry on August 19, 1989, marking it as our “hello forever” instead of the goodbyes we’d said the last two years.

But now, with a single sentence, Bill suggested a permanent goodbye.

Summer and Fall, 1991

I can’t remember the timing. Was it the middle of his health crisis? When the doctor suggested his mystery ailments were caused by pancreatic cancer?

Or after he’d spent a month in the hospital for a stomach ulcer — only to have the symptoms return? Or as he anticipated a more aggressive ulcer surgery?

Why this unwelcome sentence from the man I loved?

“If I die, I want you to marry again.”

“Why?” I asked him.

“Because you do better with a partner,” he replied.

“Well, if I die, I don’t want you to marry again!” I retorted, demonstrating I was not the mature one in this conversation.

But I burst into tears as I said it, and the two of us pulled this thread of painful conversation to sew up details should we – I – ever walk through this. We’d come too close to the threat of death not to settle these details now.

Bill had touched my life for four years, but this conversation would change my life forever.

Because weeks later my 25-year-old husband died from complications from his ulcer surgery.

Our “hello forever” had been 25 and a half months. I still have the boxes of letters he and I wrote during our courtship and marriage. But those nine words freed me to live again – without him.

And to love again.

Three years later, with Bill’s blessing, I did marry again – a widower with four children. My new husband billed marriage to him as “an excellent opportunity for personal growth.”

Just six kind — and sometimes unwelcome — words. These, too, and this man have changed my life. We’ll celebrate 30 years next month – and I have stories to tell!

But when I see Bill next — and God promises I will — I will thank him for knowing what I could not know and giving what I couldn’t fathom needing.

His nine kind words.

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I wrote this story as part of my homework for Susie H. Baxter’s memoir writing course. The author of Write Your Memoir: One Story at a Time encouraged us to write a two-page story about a person who changed our lives, and the above is the story I shared in class on Saturday, October 19. I hadn’t intended to post it on my blog, but it seems a perfect tribute to this man whose life and words changed me forever. He died 33 years ago today.