Uncle Jack always put God first and God never made him last

I grew up in Mableton, but most of my extended family lived in Florida. I was blessed to have a wonderful great aunt and uncle. Their names were Jack and Marie Shaw.

In their younger years, they were very much in love. You didn’t have to stand too far away from them or be an adult to see the passionate love that seemed to thrive and grow unmistakably every day. We didn’t get to travel down often to see them for money was tight in our family. But when we did, that was where I always wanted to go. They always held hands, sat together. When Uncle Jack was home, as he worked in the ship yards all day, he would come in the door straight to her, kiss her and see about what she was doing and help.

They would have celebrated their 55th anniversary in July 2001, but Aunt Marie passed away that May. Fifty-five years of marriage seems like an extremely long time nowadays. Every year for their anniversary, he would always buy her a rose for every year that they had shared.

I remember talking to her that February as we were down for my own grandfather’s funeral. They pulled up in a Sportrac truck and as usual he got out and literally ran to the other side of the car to open her door, and he helped her out of the truck. Holding hands, they walked up to the funeral home porch. We greeted each other and I exclaimed to them what a awesome pair they still were after all these years. Aunt Marie smiled and said she had married a silly, romantic man. But she knew how lucky she was. I watched them throughout the day (she had been real sick for several months) and he would walk slowly and was very mindful of her in every way.

Unfortunately just a couple of months after she became ill once more, she came down with pneumonia. They hospitalized her and put her in intensive care. We came down and saw about them and as was the norm, her "silly, romantic man" never left her side. He won the hearts of all the nurses as he never left her side, but just one time. They diagnosed her to have a rapid aggressive cancer that had moved into her lungs, and the doctors said she didn’t have long. Her wish was to see once more the dog they both shared and loved, so Uncle Jack left the hospital and got the dog and stood outside the window so she could see it once more. 

She passed after two weeks. Every day he would load the dog up with a chair and go to the cemetery. He would sit down and talk to her as he always done.

I drove down several times as we were all worried about him, but he seemed to be at peace. Within two years, he began to get sick and his legs were giving out, but he still kept his vigil going when he could. He was a World War II veteran and had worked in asbestos on the ship yards for years and thus came down with lung cancer, which he suffered with a painful peace. He would say, 'I am only a few more months from seeing her once more.' By 2005, he was really sick, and I went to see him. He gave me a lot of money and said, "Deb I want to see you as often as I can, so here is some gas money. Come as much as you can."

So I went down every weekend.

One particular weekend he and I stayed up late, and he got out a bunch of old pictures. One of them was a picture of him and her back in the '50s, standing in front of an old car. All smiles and happiness flowing out of it as you looked at them. I told him that I loved that picture. He just smiled and said it had been taken just weeks after they had met.

"I was the happiest guy in the world,” he said. When they had met, she had already been married and given birth to a little girl.

He went on: “I followed her around a while before I asked her out. She was so beautiful to me. I finally got the courage, and she said yes.”

It had made me smile, so I asked him, “I have been married twice already and I have never had a relationship that came near the magnitude that you had. What is the secret to so many years of such a great love and passion?”

He smiled and went on to explain, "Deb, I was raised by a single mom. She had us four boys all alone. She had to work all the time for my dad never cared about us. A lot of time we didn’t have enough food even to fill our stomachs at night. I quit school in third grade to run a paper route to help, as did my brothers. Still today I can hardly neither read nor do I write. But I promised my mom, whom I loved, if God ever sent me a woman, I would cherish her and love her with no bounds. So when I met her, I wanted to make sure I knew all I could about her. We began to ask questions and share our feelings.

"As we went through life, this continued. As you grow and get old, you change. But we talked so much, we saw the changes, and when they came about, nothing changed. The biggest mistake in today’s marriage is people forget the greatest blessing is marriage, which is God’s plan, and they immediately buy big houses and big fancy cars. And they spend all their time working to pay for these things and what happens is it usually winds up costing them the greatest things in life.

"Quality time is where you make it. That woman God gave me seldom went anywhere without me. I always came home from work and I pitched in. I cooked, cleaned, did whatever I could to get it all done, so we had our time together even after we had two girls in the house. She was my wife, never my servant. I never wanted her to be too tired to be with me. We never bought anything that costed us that quality time. When the weekend came we finished the house and yard work, so we had the whole rest of the weekend. And we never went to bed mad. It is better to be happy than to be right. I never wanted her mad at me. She was the greatest gift God ever gave to me. It’s always good to appreciate what you are lucky enough to have.

"People think I am crazy for going to the cemetery all the time and still carrying on the questions and conversations we always had. But after my Savior gets me I shall cross through the gate and there she will be standing and then I will get my answers.”

On Dec. 4, 2005 Jack Shaw passed from this world. A man who couldn’t read nor write was blessed with a lifelong love that never dimmed. He retired from the ship yards making $26 an hour. All that he and his wife had was paid for and he had $400,000 in the bank that he never spent, yet he was far richer than anyone I had ever known. And he never walked away from anyone who was in need. He never lived beyond his means and he never threw away what God had so blessed him with.

I wrote this article to share it with you. And I hope it touches your heart and you will always be thankful for God’s greatest blessings: a marriage and a very good mother. Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Editor's Note: The quotes in this column are paraphrased by the columnist.