When we decided to marry, we planned to build a home on her property at 1097 West in Montgomery, where we planned to get married. Construction started several months before the wedding but had not been completed before our set wedding date. At the time, I still had three years left at Dow before retirement. I moved the trailer I had been using behind Trish’s cabin onto my uncle Buster’s land on Oyster Creek in Clute so Micah would have a place to stay and visit with me.
We were married on December 20, 2003, at 7 p.m., in her son’s home in Cut and Shoot, Texas.
Our marriage began with adjustments. On our wedding night, we stayed at a hotel near Houston Intercontinental Airport because we had an early flight to Costa Rica the next morning. During the night, I woke up and found her gone. She was in the bathroom, trying to sleep in the bathtub because my snoring kept her awake. I helped her back to bed and told her I would stay awake so she could sleep, but that did not last. When I woke up the second time, she was gone again, this time with the covers. I found her in the closet. Neither of us slept much.
At the resort in the mountains of Costa Rica, the same thing happened. She told me I would have to sleep outside. I walked around the parking lot for a while before she let me back in. We had brought tennis rackets, expecting to play, but it rained every day in the mountains. We took a cab back to San José, got adjoining hotel rooms, and enjoyed the rest of our honeymoon. A friend had recommended a cab driver, and he drove us around San Jose the entire time, taking us to dinner and to the casinos. It felt like having a chauffeur.
Near the end of the trip, my sister called from Brady to tell me that my mother had died. We ended the honeymoon, went home, repacked, and drove to Brady for the funeral. Both of my ex‑wives were there.