Shortly after Beth passed away three years ago, I took a trip to Cloudland Canyon. Newly widowed. On my own for the first time in decades. Trying to figure out what just happened. Wondering what might be in store for me down the road.

I’m standing at the edge of the overlook, leaning on the wooden fence, and looking out over the expanse of the canyon. This is Appalachia. This is not the high desert out west. This is oak and hickory forest. Green as far as the eye can see. Granite outcroppings running just below the ridge. Small touches of early fall color dot the canyon slopes.

I’m standing there, and I remember thinking “It’s not fair.” It’s not right that our 43 years together should end this way. We had expectations. We had promised each other that we would grow old together and hold hands sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch.

It didn’t help that, while I stood there, everybody else who wandered down the rock path to take a peek at the canyon came in pairs. College-aged couples holding hands. Thirty-something couples with kids in tow. Retired couples, him holding her arm to make sure she wouldn’t stumble over the rocks.

They all came and went, looked for a few minutes, and left. In some strange way, seeing them together cut me. They didn’t know that I had just lost my wife. They weren’t doing anything wrong. They were just doing normal couple stuff. And I felt guilty for being angry.

I lingered in front of that view for maybe an hour. There’s something about standing in front of a huge landscape that reminds a man that this world is a big place. That there’s a bigger purpose to life than just my own expectations. There’s always another chapter to be lived.

Unknown to me, God was already at work.

Marion was raised near Hampton and went to school in Jonesboro. Through some of her old friends on FB, she saw something about this fella from Hampton who wrote a book. She’s all about supporting local artists and authors, always buying something handmade or written by some unknown schmuck.

“It supports what they do,” she says.

Anyway, she bought the first GB book on Amazon just to see if there was anything familiar in it. She thought she might know some of the places or people. She didn’t, but she enjoyed the book. End of story.

That was about three months after I visited Cloudland Canyon. A year and a half before we ever met.

I can’t recall if I’ve told you this before, but we met at a funeral. Young guys go to weddings to meet girls. You get to be my age, and your chances are better at funerals.

Not that I was looking.

It was just a quick 5 minute howdy. A church in Newnan. As “chance” would have it, I knew some people there. She attended church there. She had given my book to a mutual friend who was there that day. He pointed me out and told her, “If you want to meet him, there he is over there.”

She came over. We sat six feet apart and talked for a few minutes with our hands folded in our laps. She said she enjoyed my stories. I said I appreciated anyone who would sacrifice the time to read them. We parted ways when the organ music began.

That was pretty much it. Or maybe not.

I won’t bore you with a play-by-play recap, but over the next four to six weeks things got interesting. We bantered back and forth on FB a few times. She sassed me about building a couch for my back porch. I laughed. We private messaged briefly. I asked her to swap phone numbers with me. She swallowed hard enough to nearly choke.

In one sense, Marion is way further down the road than I am. Mike died almost 10 years ago. She participated in a grief share group and dug deep to figure out who she was going to be. And who she is, is a very independent woman, confident enough to do anything she sets her mind to do.

About the very first thing she ever told me over the phone was, “I don’t need no stinking man.” That is the redneck version of “I am woman, hear me roar.”

She’s tough, for sure. Her hands have more calluses than mine. She will work from early to late without stopping to eat. She will fix anything by herself, and she will challenge you to fix your own stuff.

“If I can figure it out, so can you.”

Before I even knew Marion existed, I made a request of the One in charge of the big picture. I was content to be alone. I was prepared to live out the rest of my life with purpose. I wasn’t looking. I wasn’t scanning the dating sites. I did go to supper once with some friends who wanted me to meet a certain lady. It just wasn’t the right time.

My deal was this. If there was gonna be somebody in my life of the female persuasion, God was gonna have to drop her right in front of me out of nowhere. And if He was gonna do that, I asked that it be somebody with a lot of self-confidence that would challenge me.

Note to self: Be careful what you pray for.

But I have to say that along with the toughness comes a tender heart, a deep faith, and a generous spirit. She is one of the kindest individuals I have ever known.

I don’t have a clue how all of this is supposed to work. She says all the time that only God could have put the two of us together. No way the circumstances line up without some divine intervention. I can’t really disagree.

I’ve come a long way from being that angry person standing at the railing over that canyon. When I hear of other couples celebrating 45, 46, 47 years together, I think sometimes how that was supposed to be me and Beth. That could have been Marion and Mike.

But that’s not the cards life dealt either one of us. Life doesn’t always work out to have a fairy tale ending.

I can only tell you this. Life is better together than alone. We have both discovered things that we didn’t know we missed. Being alone, you make do. Finding a second chance at love opens the door to things forgotten. Like having someone say “Good morning,” even if it’s by text message.

Last week we went to Fort Payne, Alabama to chase the route of the World’s Longest Yard Sale. At one point we drove right by Cloudland Canyon on the way toward Chattanooga. I found it ironic, or maybe it was poetic that I had returned (sort of) to the very spot where my grief and anguish nearly got the best of me.

In a way, we have given each other a new heart and a new hope. We have rediscovered that, once again, life is full of expectations. Our story is as deep and as simple as that.

Which is why I want you to know that on a cool mountain morning, after having at least one cup of coffee to make sure I was thinking straight, I asked Marion to marry me.

And she said yes.