On the morning of her 14th wedding anniversary, Lucy Matthews decided to dig her wedding gown out of storage and put it to good use one more time. She wore the gown while picking up her husband, Derek, from the airport as he returned home from a business trip early that morning so that the pair could spend their anniversary together. As he came up the escalator, Lucy held up a sign reading "Derek, I'd do it all over again. I love you."
When Derek glanced up and spotted his bride, he was shocked and awed.
"The sweetest thing he said afterward was that on our wedding day, he got chills when I came around the corner. He said, 'I was expecting you to walk around the corner that day, so there was all this anticipation. But when I was coming up the escalator, I wasn't expecting you at all, especially in a dress. I'm so glad we're together.' He kept telling me, 'I'm going numb, I'm going numb,'" she told ABC News.
Throughout their marriage, the couple has learned that each day together is worthy of a celebration; Lucy is battling a chronic disease — a type of ulcerative colitis that can turn into cancer; she undergoes chemo every six weeks. Derek has been struck by lightning and lived to tell the tale. "Our mentality as a family is just try to live your lives where every day is a gift," said Lucy.
Though Lucy heard nothing but positive remarks from other travelers ("One guy walked by and told me 'You just made my day. Love is still alive'"), she was surprised by how many people questioned why she'd do something so big for a "non-milestone" anniversary.
"I was really taken by how many people asked, 'What anniversary is it?' When I told them 14th, they'd say, 'Oh it's not a milestone then?' But why isn't 14 a milestone? The 25th, the 15th, every year is big, especially in this day and age when people give up so easily... I think every day is a milestone."
"We've lost the art of celebration. We should celebrate how much we love each other, celebrate that we have life every day. I just think that every birthday, every anniversary, and indeed, every day is a celebration and a gift and we should treat it as a gift," she said.
—Kristen O'Gorman Klein
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