Unexpected Happy Memories

One thing that I had long been meaning to do was to take our wedding video which was recorded on VHS and have it converted to a DVD. I was, in fact, planning to do this for a surprise for Bob on our wedding anniversary.  Unfortunately, he died before then....

And I could kick myself for that.  (Memo to everyone: don't put things off -- you never know.)

Anyway, on our wedding anniversary, I actually dug up that VHS tape to take to a recording place and have it converted.  I found, while looking for the wedding tape, two other VHS tapes, one clearly marked as a "vintage fashion show" that I had done in 1993 and the other tape was mysteriously unmarked.  I decided to take them all.

After dropping off the tapes, I got a call from the recording place telling me that the unmarked video was a birthday party for someone named "Shirley" and I thought, hmmm.... Now, I know two Shirleys, one which would be an aunt and I couldn't imagine why I'd have a video of her party, and the other being a dear old friend, whom I haven't seen for years. So assumed it was the latter -- but still couldn't figure out why I had a party video of her birthday...

I picked the DVD's up yesterday and imagine my surprise when I popped the party DVD in and the first thing on it was Bob and me! Oh my.  I will share some clips here.  You will have to excuse the quality which because of the age of the original VHS tapes (1994) and technology is rather grainy and the audio is not perfect....  Here's the first one.

I tell you, I nearly fell off my chair as the party video progressed and there was Bob and me dancing to our song!!! Which is (I'll Stop the World and) Melt With You by Modern English.  Because the song is copyrighted there may be some pop-up ads (sorry) but YouTube informs me this is the only way to legally put it here.  Here it is.

I must say, I was crying tears of joy and then some. I am overjoyed to have this tape of us dancing to our song.

One thing that had always amazed me about Bob was how accepting he was of all my friends and what a motley crew of them I had back then!  Friends that were professional business women, teachers, feminist activists, lesbians, all the way to single moms on welfare and an ex-con on parole.  Bob accepted every one of them with open arms.

Another thing I loved about Bob was he was never afraid to get up and dance, even if he was the only guy out there on the dance floor.  Here's a clip of Bob dancing with us girls.

The woman with the long, long hair is the birthday girl.

And the tape reminded me of how much fun we used to have -- and boy oh boy, did we love to dance!! I've never had a better dance partner. We really tore up the floor together. And it didn't matter what the song. As this video proves, of us dancing to "The Devil Came Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels band and its NOT an easy song to dance to, in fact it's pretty exhausting.  Unfortunately, the person taping this cut Bob's head off several times because of our height difference (Bob being 6'3" and me 5'4") but still I love it. It reminds me of how much fun we had. And again, ads may appear...

And lastly, our birthday message to Shirley.

Yesterday, I spent all afternoon and evening watching and rewatching this tape and crying tears of both joy and grief and feeling so much love for Bob and feeling so very blessed to have been loved by him....