Tears Of Love

     When Linda and I got engaged we eagerly made plans for our future starting with the wedding. Linda like most girls dreamed of walking down the isle and holding my hand as we said our vows so a church wedding it was going to be. Plans for our June wedding started in December.
     I don't know who was more excited about this wedding, the bride or the bride's mother. Together they thought of every detail from the invitations to the punch bowl. It seemed that for months the wedding was all Linda and her mom could talk about. My job was to decide who of my relations, friends and acquaintances I was sending an invitation to, get their addresses and once the invitation was written ( Linda did that part ) I scrawled my signature on them.
     My time at my duty station was growing short and I knew that a transfer was upcoming  but had no idea when. This was one thought we tended to ignore, we were happy and in love, nothing could put a damper on our big day or so we thought.
     Just a couple of weeks before the wedding I got my orders. They couldn't have come at a worse time and they couldn't have been more disconcerting. The orders said I was going to Assault Craft Div, 12, the name alone was something to be concerned about. The word "Assault" in any context should be alarming but when the military uses it they usually mean some sort of armed confrontation. Add to that the fact that the unit was listed as secret and no one could tell me anything about the outfit, what was it or where it was. This was 1967, the war in Vietnam was escalating, more and more men and materials were shipping out every day. Every day the list of military personnel wounded or killed in the line of duty grew longer.
     I went to Linda and told her I had orders, I told her everything I knew about the outfit, which was nothing, and told her what I thought I was getting in to. Tours of duty in Vietnam usually went on for 12 months, this was no way to start out a marriage, add to that, I may be in combat with the possibility of getting wounded or worse. Making Linda a widow was on my mind and it didn't sit well. I thought we should postpone the wedding, the possibility of coming home an invalid or in a coffin was something I didn't want to put Linda through.
     Linda took all of this hard, we were in love and she wanted nothing more than to be my wife. She cried so hard rivulets of tears ran down her cheeks, her body trembled with heart wrenching sobs. She pleaded with me. In the end I hugged her and I kissed away the tears, we kept our date at the church. Four months later she kissed me goodbye.
     During her final months Linda refused to be less than upbeat for her friends and family but there were times when I helped her to stand I would hold her tight against me while she cried from the pain and exhaustion. The morning after she passed it was my tears, my heart wrenching sobs that shook my body, she couldn't hold me and kiss away my tears but my love for her got me through.