Long Lost Love, Reunited

I was around 20 or 21, sitting in an office around a long table with about ten others. It was a presentation on fertilisers, plants, soil, the usual. I was struggling to stay awake and wondering why I’d even bothered showing up. I didn’t know the lady presenting, but B had told me a bit about her. Apparently, she’d recently reunited with a long-lost love from her 20s. She was in her late 50s now.

Partway through the meeting, someone casually asked her about this “romantic reunion.” Everything shifted in a moment.

She paused and then started sharing her story.

Thanks to Facebook, she said, she’d received a message out of the blue from someone she hadn’t seen in over 30 years her former partner from her early 20s. They had been in a serious relationship back then and one day he’d gone to her house to ask her father for permission to marry her. She wasn’t home.

Her father said no. Flat out refused.

And so the man walked away just disappeared, without saying a word. She never heard from him again.

Both of them ended up marrying other people, starting families, going through life but neither of them was happy. And then, all those years later, he found her on Facebook, sent a message, and just like that, they picked up where they left off.

She started crying as she spoke, right there in the middle of the presentation. I was the only guy in the room, surrounded by tears and tissues. One woman yelled, “It’s true love!”  Another called out, “That’s so beautiful!”

People were hugging. There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

I just sat there quiet, still, in awe at the power of love.

They ended up back together, after 30 long years.