Life isn’t a straight line. Ever. It might be straight-ish for a while, but only temporarily before a curveball is thrown. A corner is turned. A new perspective is gained. My favorite quote is, “The only constant is change” and it perfectly encapsulates the ebb and flow that is life. Without the pain and the joy, the familiar and the unknown, are you really living?
That’s why this story is so captivating. It hits home in many ways, but in other ways, it’s hard to relate to. What this couple goes through isn’t something you hear about often. It’s a constantly unfolding story that moves with the course of life, and ends on a strange and wonderful note of serendipity!
At a restaurant in Kentucky, back in 1955, Harold Holland now 83, met his future ex-wife-wife, Lilian Barnes, now 78. It must have been love at first sight, because the two were wed later that year, and went on to have five children! It was by 1967, when Harold’s demanding job kept him away from the family, that the couple divorced, and they each went their separate ways. Although they remained friendly, Harold and Lilian started new families and new lives.
Harold met Maudie Corum in 1975. She was a widowed mother-of-three who died of liver disease in 2015. Meanwhile, Lilian married Ted Malin, a man she met and had two more children with before he passed away in 1986. Two years later, she was married, again, to Arval Barnes, who also passed away in 2015.
It seems Harold and Lilian went completely separate ways to lead entirely different lives, to end up back in the same place in their lives, figuratively and literally. The two caught up at a family reunion, and by December of 2016, they wanted to marry each other – again. It seems wild and unheard of, but the two are happy. “We decided to walk the last mile together,” Harold said. And on April 15, 2018, they will start their new journey together for the second time.
