The woman walking through the Valentine’s Day card aisle noticed him immediately.
A man standing alone among the pink and red displays, reading cards with an intensity that suggested this wasn’t a quick errand. He was taking his time, considering each message carefully, his expression thoughtful in a way that made her curious.
She struck up conversation the way strangers sometimes do in stores—casually, asking if he’d found what he was looking for. And Tom, instead of giving a polite one-word answer and moving on, did something unexpected.
He shared his story.
Tom had found the love of his life in a small hometown in Virginia. Despite being deployed to Vietnam, he was optimistic that the girl he’d soon known in Mexico would be waiting when he came home. But when he returned, she wasn’t there. Dead from an illness, his optimism shattered.
Devastated, he volunteered for the craziest missions possible, eventually becoming a career military man. He completed airborne school, became a Green Beret, and joined a special forces group. The military sent him to medical school and he became a highly regarded surgeon.
After spending thirty years as a retired military surgeon, Tom was browsing the internet when he stumbled upon his old love’s photo on a website. He contacted her, and eventually they reconnected.
This August would mark their fifth wedding anniversary. Both were in their sixties. Their mothers were in the front row at the wedding. Between the two of them, they had twenty-two grandchildren.
Now Tom and his wife take cross-country road trips and visit Hawaii, where every day he gets an orchid for her to put in her hair. On their first date after reconnecting, he took her on a plane ride and added it to their bucket list: to skydive together.
Tom shared his story with pride and romanticism that the woman found rare in people nowadays. He explained that in his shopping cart, he had about five different Valentine’s Day cards—he said he puts them all over the house for her, and she does the same for him.
Standing there in the Valentine’s aisle, surrounded by mass-produced sentiments, Tom represented something genuine. A love that had survived decades of separation. A man who’d spent thirty years building a distinguished career while carrying the memory of someone he thought he’d lost forever. And then, impossibly, finding her again.
The photo shows Tom in the Valentine’s aisle, wearing a camouflage cap and blue tank top, grinning widely beneath a heart-shaped “I Love You” balloon. He’s surrounded by cards and gifts, a man on a mission to express love in every possible way.
Five different Valentine’s cards. Not because one wasn’t enough, but because he had decades of love to make up for. Because after losing her once and spending a lifetime without her, he wasn’t going to miss any opportunity to remind her she was cherished.
The woman who met him posted about the encounter because it moved her. Because in a world where Valentine’s Day often feels commercial and shallow, Tom’s enthusiasm was authentic. His pride in his love story—in the woman who’d waited, in the life they’d built after finding each other again—was infectious.
Tom had deployed to Vietnam as a young man in love. He’d returned to devastating loss. He’d channeled that grief into becoming someone extraordinary—a Green Beret, a surgeon, someone who saved lives because he couldn’t save the one he’d wanted most.
And then, decades later, the internet gave him back what he thought he’d lost forever.
Now in their sixties, with twenty-two grandchildren between them, Tom and his wife are making up for lost time. Cross-country road trips. Hawaiian vacations. Orchids in her hair every single day. Skydiving together because why not—they’ve already survived the impossible.
Standing in that Valentine’s aisle, Tom wasn’t just buying cards. He was celebrating survival. Reconnection. The miracle of finding someone again after thirty years of believing they were gone forever.
The woman thanked him for making her day and reminding her of the timeless power of love. Because that’s what Tom’s story represents—that some loves don’t die, even when separated by war, time, and decades of living completely different lives.
They just wait. Quietly. Until the universe finds a way to bring them back together.
And when that happens, you buy five Valentine’s cards and put them all over the house. Because one is never enough when you’re celebrating a love that refused to stay lost.