Heartwarming Love Story by Jerry Morrissey
In a serendipitous twist of fate, Jerry Morrissey's love story with Pat, a nurse who tended to him during a challenging time, began to unfold. Over the course of three decades together, they navigated through numerous trials, from fertility struggles to a Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis. Their journey has taken them from Scotland to England, and most recently, to Australia, where Jerry's engineering expertise has found purpose in contributing to complex major transport projects.
Crafting an Unforgettable Love Story
"After a few days off, Pat returned on a late shift, and she was walking around saying hello to everybody. She stopped and turned around when she saw me and said, ‘Your eyes are open!’ I just smiled – I could see her much better. My eyesight was a little blurry still, but it was lovely to get a proper look at her. I was attracted to her large, beautiful eyes. Some people find other body parts attractive (and don’t get me wrong, other physical attributes are indeed appealing), and I guess we are all different, but I’m attracted to eyes. Eyes never really change during your lifetime; other body parts change in shape and size, but eyes stay the same. Eyes don’t lie; they are honest. No matter what someone tells you, what they genuinely feel can be seen in the first few milliseconds in their eyes. I also see (no pun intended) the eyes as a gateway to the soul. If you look behind a person’s eyes, you will see them for who they really are and establish if they are a good human."
"The more my health improved and the more I got to know her, the more I thought about asking Pat out, but I still didn’t know how to broach the subject."
"We didn’t tell anyone about our budding romance, as Pat didn’t want her professional reputation to be put at risk, and forming a relationship with a patient could potentially be frowned upon. Later that week, when I left the hospital, we could ‘go public’."
"It was the night before the wedding and we’d taken the vicar up on his kind offer to stay at the vicarage. When he asked us what our normal sleeping arrangements were, we told him we slept in the same bed together. ‘Okay, then, you can have my bed and I’ll sleep in the spare room,’ he said. That night I lay in bed, staring up at the big black crucifix above the headboard, thinking, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, forgive me for what we are doing sleeping together in the vicar’s bed the night before we get married. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’"
"After everything I had been through, nearly losing my life, intense physical
and emotional pain, the stroke and months of rehabilitation, I had finally found happiness with Pat, and she had found happiness with me. And now her parents seemed intent on destroying it."
"Cranking it up to the next level, we tried ICSI (intracytoplasmic sperm
injection), which involved injecting my sperm into Pat’s eggs in the laboratory. Of six eggs, three were viable and yet there was zero implantation. The physical and emotional pain that Pat experienced, and the knock-on effect for me as well, in losing children we already loved and never got to meet, was unbearable. I had already given our children names like Rebecca and Rachel. I had their lives already mapped out."
"The truth for Pat and me is that we give our love unconditionally to each other; we don’t hold back and we don’t make other things a dependency or a precondition of our love. We give it freely and openly. We may feel a little exposed at times (particularly in the early days of the relationship) but this approach has been reciprocated tenfold – it eventually leads to a relationship that is built on trust. We humans are not mind readers. We need to communicate and discuss (in a sensitive way) how we feel about something, and what makes us happy and what makes us sad, and work through any difficulties."
