I used to buy coffee for Larry, a homeless man outside my subway station. Mine had cream. His was black.<\/p>\n
One day, he held a sign: \u201cMARRY ME. I HAVE ONE MONTH LEFT.\u201d<\/p>\n
His liver was failing. He said he didn’t want to die without someone claiming him. So I married him at the courthouse.<\/p>\n
Three weeks later, Larry died.<\/p>\n
Then a letter arrived.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to apologize. I lied about why I asked you to marry me.\u201d<\/p>\n
My hands shook as I read. Larry told me to visit the courthouse and ask for Margaret.<\/p>\n
There, I discovered he’d worked for 28 years, processing marriage licenses. Whenever couples arrived without witnesses, he volunteered. His signature appeared on hundreds of certificates.<\/p>\n
But he’d never been married himself.<\/p>\n
Margaret showed me ours. Beside Larry’s name was a word he’d waited his whole life to see: \u201cSpouse.\u201d<\/p>\n
I finished his letter sitting outside our subway stop, holding two coffees.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t need a wife to prove my life mattered,\u201d he’d written. \u201cI wanted someone to choose me. And I was afraid loneliness wouldn’t be a good enough reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
His final message broke me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou were not my failed rescue. You were my wife for three weeks. I liked it.\u201d<\/p>\n
For once, I stopped trying to fix everything and simply sat there, missing him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I used to buy coffee for Larry, a homeless man outside my subway station. Mine had cream. His was black. One day, he held a sign: \u201cMARRY ME. I HAVE ONE MONTH LEFT.\u201d His liver was failing. He said he didn’t want to die without someone claiming him. So I married him at the courthouse. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10773,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10774,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10772\/revisions\/10774"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storypulls.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}