Selected One

I was married for 10 years and no matter how hard we tried to have a child, we couldn’t seem to have one. Our marriage later deteriorated into becoming a fufu dish for making a baby, where our main goal suddenly centered on making it happen at all cost. My marriage to my late wife struggled with infertility. And without realizing it, we lost focus. We had dreams for ourselves before we got married. We had so many plans we wanted to accomplish together as husband and wife. However, every other dream seemed to pale because the one dream we thought could happen to us so we could experience parenthood wasn’t happening.

By the time I wanted us to make our marriage and love for each other a priority, my wife was diagnosed with cancer. That was another battle to be shared for another day. It created an empty void in me that my wife alone could not fill. I became that boy pretending to be a man, seeking validation in another woman’s arm because I could not bring myself into accepting the fact that I was simply running from myself. I was searching for a love that I hadn’t even learned to give to myself first.

Two weeks before my wife died, I had met this beautiful lady that I wanted to get to know. It was a wrong number dialed. She was trying to reach someone else but mistakenly called me. I became curious because she had an attractive voice. Her smile at the other end of the phone was gentle. Her voice was soft and she spoke kindly to me. I assumed she carried herself with calmness and that felt refreshingly different. I was drawn to her. Dave, my life as at that time was stressful and the daily pressures were mentally exhausting. I needed something new to enter into my life with its calm and gentle presence.

We agreed to meet, so I arranged our first date. I arrived at the venue on time. Guess who showed up on our date with my wife? My wife had selected her to be the one to have a child with me since she couldn’t, and had planned every activity leading to us meeting for the first time. My wife believed she was a good fit for me since I was already sleeping with other women. My whole life flashed before my eyes.

Fast forward to today; I’m married to the other lady now and we have two kids – thanks to my late wife.

Image Credit: Gustavo Fring