A Love Story: Act Three

That June Dung moved to Georgia. Kathy could be close to her family, not feel the guilt and he could be with her. It was not easy since he gave a good job to come to Georgia with no job.

He worked as a courier driving around Atlanta for almost 6 months. Then he got sound engineering gig for Georgia Pacific but it took him on tour around the country for another 4 months. They spoke on the phone every day and whenever he was close enough Kathy would join up with the tour. When he came back he got his first sound design job with Horizon Theatre. He barely had any equipment and his studio office was the dining room table we had to clear every night for dinner. There was no real money to go out for anything extra. But they both loved that apartment, their first place together. They slept on a mattress on the floor covered in cats. They danced in the kitchen to The Very Thought of You. They laughed a lot, they worried little about bills. Everything would work out. Not having a lot meant not a lot to lose.

Dung would later get full time work at the Alliance. There would be more demand for him to design at other places around town. They would rent a house. Small, but centrally located. They worked, they played at the park, it was a good life. Kathy often asked did he ever see them married. He was in no rush. Kathy wanted very much to be his wife. She loved him, and was not worried about him leaving her but she wanted to stand in front of friends and family and join her life with his. Show both families how they were not as different as they were alike. It was important to combine the families, traditions and cultures formally the way they had always done together. As time wore on they wanted to buy a house, and they decided to get married.

It was Fall, his favorite time of the year. So many of his family came. They saw the house, their first house. They met Kathy; since they lived in California only his parents had met her. The family readied their house and the meal for the rehearsal dinner. It was wonderful. It was amazing how much they did for them considering they had never met Kathy.

The wedding was November 7th, 1998, six years since Baltimore. It was small and mostly about the joining of two families and cultures into one. He looked so handsome in his tux and she felt strong just holding his hand. She will never forget how happy he was. Her shy retiring mate was out greeting guests grinning from ear to ear. He could not wait to be her husband. That was the best gift Kathy could have ever asked for. He will never forget the look on his family's face when she came out later in the red traditional Vietnamese wedding dress. They danced again to They Very Thought of You, this time in front of friends and family but it still seemed to them like their private kitchen in their small apartment. It was a perfect day, just like people talked about. But the thing they could never counted on was how much it would mean to be his wife and her husband. It seemed like a perfect coming together that had grown out of their years together.

Now when they go to bed in the evening and wake up in the morning they think what a great gift to be his wife and her husband. Still if they lost it all, all the material things, the blessings they have would far outweigh the tragedies. They remember finding their way back to each other and it keeps them grateful. She is grateful for his forgiveness and he is grateful for her changed mind. Though when most people meet them they are sure all they see are their differences; when they hold each other all they feel is complete.