Preview above: What happens when people get back with their ex and how do they make it work? Tuesday August 6 at 8:30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand.
It was a Saturday morning and I had just finished watching a baseball game with my girlfriends when a very tall, dark and handsome stranger walked towards me.
“Oh, Sheila,” he said. “I believe you’re playing in the grand final next week, would you like me to take your mitts home and polish them?”
I was 19. I had no idea who he was, but he obviously knew me and that I played softball.
I couldn’t fault his kind gesture so I accepted the offer. But it took me six weeks before I told him my name was Shirley, not Sheila.
During that time, we’d gone on several dates and I knew he was the man I wanted to marry.
Shirley and Geoffrey on their wedding day in 1954. Source: Supplied
Three years later, we did, on a beautiful Hobart morning at 11am on October 23, 1954.
During the next 10 years, Geoffrey and I had four beautiful daughters.
He was a loving husband and father, but he’d had an unhappy childhood and was not a demonstrative person, preferring to keep his feelings bottled up.
He was also a very busy man who worked hard during the day, and volunteered all his spare time to the navy club. Geoffrey had been in the navy before we met and it was still an important part of his life.
My husband was a good man. I knew he loved me, but he never expressed it.
Our marriage wasn’t bad, but it was lonely. And the loneliness I felt was exacerbated when my two eldest daughters got married and left home.
After 26 years together, when the loneliness became unbearable, we separated.
The day I left was one of the saddest days of my life, and I remember how I could barely stop the tears falling as I walked out.
Geoffrey with his four daughters. Source: Supplied
During the ensuing years, Geoffrey was still very much involved in our daughters’ lives and would attend family functions, such as birthdays and Christmas parties.
The girls would say to me, “Mum, you know Dad still loves you, don’t you?”
“Yes, I know he does,” I’d reply.
The girls were still close with their father, but our lives continued separately, albeit with the common thread of our children keeping us connected.
We’d been divorced for 10 years when Geoffrey was given some bad news by his doctors.
It was lung cancer. He was 61. It was terminal.
I couldn’t bear the thought of him being on his own, so I invited him to live with me so I could care for him.
Not long after he came home, and almost 40 years after we first married, Geoffrey asked me to marry him again.
Shirley pictured with Geoffrey when he was first diagnosed with cancer. Source: Supplied
And again I said “Yes”, knowing how important it was for him that we were officially reunited as a family.
At the time, my daughter Catherine was pregnant with her own daughter. The doctors didn’t think Geoffrey would get to meet her, but he promised he’d hang on.
On October 10, 1990, our granddaughter Amy was born. He met her, and held her closely in his arms.
After keeping his promise, Geoffrey lapsed into a coma a week later.
The night before he died, he grabbed my hand and said: “I’d never stopped loving you”.
I cried, and thought, “Why didn’t he say it earlier?”
I have absolutely no regrets marrying Geoffrey again.
During those last few months at home, we were able to mend so many bridges. And, strangely, even though we knew he was going to die – we were happy.
