"But she's still with us,” he said while wiping away tears. “Everything that ever happened to me...she made it happen. Whatever I am today, she made it happen. She had so much confidence in me."
Since that day six years ago, each and every morning, Jay packs up his lawn chair, a couple of freshly cut flowers and visits Vivian at the Chattanooga National Cemetery. The grass in front of her headstone is worn due to the hours spent there by Jay.
We visited Jay on their 76th wedding anniversary. Jay explains that the two were essentially homeless and uneducated when they met. Even after marriage, the two struggled to make ends meet. But it was their love for one another that kept them going.
"We lived in a one-bedroom apartment over there on North Market Street, right where the Publix is sitting there right now,” he explained. “We shared the bathroom and a kitchen with another couple. We didn't have no furniture. But we had one another, we were together."
Eventually, times got a little easier financially. Jay landed a good job, Vivian raised the children. And for some, when things get easier in life, it gets easier to forget your past and even where you might be headed. Vivian had something to say to jay about that.
"I thought I knew something,” he said. “Said ‘I’ a lot of times. She handed me a little piece of paper. She told me I want you to read this word. If this word has ‘I’ in it, I’ll take it back. The word was "we". She said I don't want to hear that word ‘I’ anymore. It's ‘we’. And that's the way it was for 70 years."
Jay will continue to visit Vivian every day. To talk with her, to sing to her and to thank her for all the years that made them, “we”.
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October 05, 2020 at 06:48PM
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3 In Your Town: The Love Story of Jay and Vivian - WRCB-TV
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