Meeting Joel

Today I have thought a lot about when I first met Joel, which seems a little odd to me since today marks the fifth month(for sundays, will be one the 6th). I met Joel in 1997 on the first day of my sophmore year at Creighton U(or the day before, not sure). I remember meeting him, along with the new freshmen in ROTC and I remember thinking about Joel, "oh boy, here we go, another prior service guy" not giving him another thought. Then on that same day, my older brother(youngest of the two) passed away. I was not interested in anyone after that. I remember one month to the day after Brads death, I had to go to an FTX, I tried my best to get out of the damn thing, but my PMS would not let that happen. I had to go, but was given time to study, I was having a hard time studying, so yippee, I get to study on an FTX! I remember being so angry that I was out there, not ready to do that, nor was I ready to have a test the following monday. I was out at the site, drew my weapon and fell into formation. I am standing in formation, waiting for everyone else, and I have the barrel of my weapon, pointed down, into the dirt. Yes, I knew better than that, but I did not care. So I am standing there, just burying the barrel into the dirt(or mud), and Joel's friend, Mike, taps me on the shoulder and says, "I would not do that if I were you". I just kept doing it, Joel comes up to me(he was in charge of the formation, of course) and says, "you don't want to keep doing that, it is going to be a pain in the ass cleaning it". I just start digging it into the ground even more. Joel takes the rifle out of my hand and turns it over and says, "don't do it again, you'll make a mess". I just glared at him and decided then that I did not like him. According to Joel, he told his friend Matt a few months later that this is the girl she is going to marry. Through out that whole year Joel would call occasionally and ask if I would want to go out with him, P, D, G, P and J. I would always turn him down, it was after I had turned 21, but none of my friends were old enough to go out to the bars. I knew why he was calling, but I just did not bite then. The next year, September 4th I think, I went to Joel's and P's house for a birthday party for a friend. It was all down hill after that. I remember falling for him before I even knew what hit, even then he swore he knew he was going to marry me, he just never told me until christmas time. I had went home for christmas, it was a quick trip and I decided very quickly that I wanted to go back to Omaha and be with Joel. I get back, we were driving out to his parent's house for a movie night and we were talking about my trip and I told him want my aunt asked me, she said, "so when is there going to be a ring?" I laughed and said, I don't know. I told Joel this and he said, "you won't marry me." I said, "how do you know? you never asked." So he said, "well....will you???" That was it, a few months after we started dating, we were engaged and we were so happy and now to think about, we laughed about it a lot in our 6 1/2 years of marriage. We were married 9 months after we started dating, we were married. I remember tellin Joel's mom, we were at the airport with them, dropping off a friend and Joel and I decided that we were going to tell them then, so we approached Barb, at the airport, and said, "Barb, we have something to tell you." She says to us, "your pregnant." We were shocked, but we laughed and said, "no, not yet, but we are going to get married." Barb felt bad about saying that, but it was funny and still is now. I am glad to have these memories and I don't think it could have happened better. It was quick, but that was how we did everything, we had a plan, always, but it was always sped up and went fast. We were always having fun though. Darn it, I miss him so much. I know we would be laugh and looking at eachother right now, knowing that we did everything "just right."