Another Love Story by Author Ben Bryant

• Posted on 1st April 2016
• in divorce & remarriage, Entertainment, entertainment books, Hollywood memoirs, Love Story
• by Ben

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Continuing my

Love Story

streak, here’s one more.

You know how the mind jumps around during that period (hopefully brief) between the time you close your eyes and when sleep comes? Last night during that time is when I became overwhelmed with gratitude. I had been doing my usual in-bed reading and my best friend and twice-wife Elizabeth was already asleep when I shutdown my iPhone and rolled over – in our king size bed – to where I could touch her. She was emitting cute little girl-snores and I almost turned my phone back on to record them but was too far gone toward sleep.

But I was not too far gone to bask in my love for this remarkable, gifted, accomplished, beautiful woman.

My appreciation for Elizabeth’s companionship was greatly magnified by the six years we spent apart during the nine year hiatus in our marriage. I won’t go into detail here but if you’re curious you can read all about it in the third volume of my memoirs, Waiting For Elizabeth. Suffice it to say that 1996 until 2002 when I was without her were the most unhappy years of my life.

I have a hard time deciding which was the happiest day of my life. Was it 25 November 1967 when we were married for the first time?

Was it 8 June 2002 when we ended our separation in conjugal bliss, 24 July 2005 when she moved back into our apartment or 1 May 2010 when she married me for the second time?

I don’t know and I really don’t care. They were all incredible highlights of my life but if I had to choose I’d pick number two. That glorious twenty-four hours at the Park Lane Hotel. It was such a relief! After over five terrible years with no Elizabeth she was once again in my embrace. For once in my life – and this is an inappropriate thing for a writer to say – words fail me.

As I write today, 1 April 2016, her departure from our home and my life is nearly twenty years in the rearview mirror and in a month we’ll celebrate the sixth anniversary of our second wedding. As I wrote in the epilog of Waiting for Elizabeth:

Once again I’m a happily married man. I like my second wife even more than I liked the first one and I suspect she’d say the same for her husbands. … The nine years we lived apart and especially the six before our reconnection began to evolve were so desolate that with each passing day I became more and more aware of the value of what I had lost. The most important aspect of my new connection with this wondrous woman is appreciation. … I have learned not only how important a well made bed is to my beloved but also how to do it. Furthermore, in the past making the bed was a chore. Now it is a joy. I know, it’s a very small thing but those very small things – and the love with which they are accomplished – add up. And the sum of those very small things is a very big number. Acting as her sous-chef every night; peeling and slicing cucumbers, chopping tomatoes and scooping the avocado for the salad. I didn’t always do that stuff before. Now I wouldn’t think of sitting and watching the news while she makes the salad. Acting as the full time dishwasher and pot scrubber… little things. … I don’t mean to be tooting my own horn here. I’m just telling you how much more I appreciate Elizabeth and how I demonstrate that appreciation through action.

If you’d like more detail about our remarkable love story click here to get Waiting for Elizabeth.