"If We Could Just Get Married" by Lorraine Martin Bennett

 – “I drove your car off a mountain.”

No mercy was given to two mostly broke kids trying to start two new careers and a new marriage.

Lorraine Martin Bennett is a print, web and broadcast journalist from Murphy, North Carolina, who graduated with her high school journalism medal and received a scholarship to UNC Chapel Hill. Her reporting career includes the Atlanta Journal, Los Angeles Times, and, in retirement, the Clay County Progress. She worked as assignment editor, news writer, copy editor, producer, and editorial manager before ending her career at CNN International. Her two published novels, Cat on a Black Moon, and Darla, are available on Amazon, Kindle, Barnes & Noble and other websites. A third novel is in the works.

Author’s Talk

Lorraine Martin Bennett

Coming through great grief seems very much like trying to swim upstream against a raging current. Two feet forward, four feet backward. 

This is my fourth story to be accepted by the Personal Story Publishing Project and I am so grateful for that. I have been trying to reclaim my life as a writer since the awful year I lost both my mother and my husband two months apart, then sold the family farm and moved twice. I now have four essays in the bank, a novel and its sequel published and a third book in the works. I am settled in a new location and feel I am beginning to thrive. 

This essay titled "If We Could Just Get Married" recaps the madcap adventures of two struggling college grads beginning new jobs with no money and little else other than our wits. 

We moved to the big city for our work, but we still had one foot planted in the rural past -- hence the mountain wedding and the wedding cake carted more than two hours to  the small town where I grew up. 

That I was able to recall our escapades with laughter instead of tears tells me I am making progress against that raging current at last.—Lorraine Martin Bennett