For Cheryl Pellack, Valentine’s Day this year will be filled with sweet memories of love, laughter and good times shared.
Pellack lost her husband, Lester, to congestive heart failure on New Year’s Eve.
This Valentine’s Day would have been their 21st wedding anniversary.
For her, Feb. 14 will always remain poignant and bittersweet.
“We got engaged on Valentine’s Day and we were married on Valentine’s Day,” she said.
Pellack, who answered the Review’s request for love stories, agreed to share her own poignant and heart wrenching story.
She met her future husband when she was working as a waitress in Ridgedale, Saskatchewan.
“He was a customer,” she said, a smile playing at the corners of her lips. “He would come in and he would flirt with me. I liked him well enough, but he was 15 years older than me so I didn’t think it would go anywhere.”
But, despite herself, the divorced mother of three, kept thinking of the gentle, friendly farmer and when he asked her out, she readily accepted.
When she took him to meet her girls, then aged four, six and 10, she knew one thing for sure.
He was the one.
“He was so good with them, and they loved him, too. And before we knew it, they became his girls, too.”
One night when the couple were all dressed up to go to a curling bonspiel dance, Lester brought out an engagement ring.
The date was Feb. 14.
“I knew it was coming and I was so thrilled. He was funny, he made me laugh every day, he was very protective and a wonderful family man.”
Five years later the couple tied the knot in holy matrimony.
The date was Feb. 14, 1998.
They were married in Ridgedale, Saskatchewan. Their colours were, of course, red and white.
As Pellack recalled her beautiful wedding, her eyes flooded with unbidden tears.
“We were so happy and it was so wonderful seeing my daughters so happy and knowing we were officially a family.”
The couple enjoyed their honeymoon at Candle Lake, Saskatchewan.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “It shows you don’t have to go far if you are with the person you love.”
The couple moved to Rimbey about five years ago to be closer to two of their daughters who live in Sylvan Lake.
They liked Rimbey’s central location and it’s rural setting.
“My husband liked the sound of the cows,” said Pellack.
This year, Pellack will travel with her family back to Saskatchewan for her husband’s memorial service.
It will, no doubt, be a difficult time, filled with so many memories.
However, even through the darkness, one can be sure that there will be happy memories of other Valentine’s Days filled with the magic of Cupid’s arrow when it truly hits its mark and two people find love.
