July 16, 2020

If I could just talk to them – just one more time – I would tell them how much I love them!

How many of us have had that wish about a loved one who passed away?

Randy Tenney actually got to fulfill that wish with his wife.  But he was the one who died.

Debra Tenney didn’t have a paranormal experience about Randy.  She didn’t visit a psychic.  She simply read the note that Randy had written to her.  A note written before he died of brain cancer last December.

“It was so, so hard.  We kept praying for miracles, and just nothing went right,” Debra said of her husband’s health struggles.  “We just didn’t get any of the miracles we wanted.”

At age 65, Randy knew he wouldn’t see another Valentine’s Day.  But he wanted to uphold their sweetheart tradition one more time.  Every year since they married in 1974, this father of eight would shower his wife with flowers and a silly poem on that holiday.  So Randy made arrangements for a future delivery.

This year for Valentine’s Day, Debra received a bouquet of yellow roses.  The color gave it away.  She knew they were from Randy because of his life motto.  He loved to “scatter sunshine.”

The tears fell when she opened the card.  It was one last poem after 45 years of marriage.

Roses are red, Violets are blue,
Yelling from Heaven that I will always love you.
With love from your eternal Valentine, R.T.

As Debra braced herself on a table while sobbing, her daughter said, “It was Dad’s idea, Mom.  It was all Dad.  He didn’t want you to be without a Valentine.”

Her daughter recorded the moment on video and posted it on Facebook.  Thousands shared it.  Debra wrote the caption, “Today I got a special delivery straight from heaven.  Randy set this up before he passed away and I can’t think of anything sweeter.  I miss my valentine so much.  He’s the best.”

The death of a loved one forces a “new normal” on us.  It’s something we all will face.  But the end of a life on earth does not end love.  As Easter people, we have hope in the greatest new normal of all.  Eternal life.

He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. – Revelation 21:4

Randy got his chance to talk to Debra one more time, and Debra got her miracle.  She said, “I guess you could call this my real life ‘P.S. I Love You’ miracle.”

– Ed Doney, Staff Writer