[crumpling paper]
Glenda Elliott: Lauree knew how to tease me
without my being offended.
And there was something about the way she would smile that,
you know, I can still see very vividly.
She was the first person I really truly loved.
But I grew up in the '40s, in a small rural community.
There were certainly no role models of what it means
to love someone of the same sex.
So, I didn't know how to understand that.
My high school sweetheart, he proposed to me.
And I thought at that time, that's what a woman did,
she got married.
And it didn't take me very long to realize
that I'd made a mistake.
So he and I decided to get a divorce.
During all of this time, Lauree and I had stayed in touch.
I knew that I loved her deeply.
She said, "Well I have very strong feelings for you too,
but most of all I want to have children."
She met a man who had asked her to marry him.
Then, she got pregnant, and she said,
"If it's a little girl, I'm going to name her after you."
Well, it turned out it was a little boy, and I was relieved.
It really would have been excruciatingly painful
if she had had a little girl named after me.
Somewhere along the way she said,
"If I outlive my husband and you don't have a partner,
perhaps we can grow old together."
And somehow, that made it alright.
But then, Lauree got cancer.
And she didn't live very long.
And I did not get to see her again.
It didn't hit me so much until I turned 60
and I began to really think about old age.
And this was the time that Lauree and I were gonna have.
And it didn't happen.
There are certain kinds of love that never die.
But I don't regret at all our time together.
It is where I learned that I could love
and I could be loved
in that complete sense of the word.