Good evening possums. Sit back if you'd please, 'cause I'm here to tell you the saddest tale that's ever broken your hearts. Here, you'd better have
the big box. This story was told on Swedish television by journalist Maria Scherer decades ago, and she told it as a true one. Details may elude me, but here's the gist of it.
A man and a woman meet when they are fairly young. They are both married, and cheating is so painful that after a while they decide not to meet again until they are free to do so. They'll start anew in a foreign country where the man has had a job offer. He will go ahead of her, make arrangements for where they will live, and the minute his divorce comes through he will send her an airplane ticket and that will be her signal.
As the ticket never arrives, the woman starts to think that the man has changed his mind and gone back to his wife. The years go by, she never marries again. Life itself goes by. In her old age her relatives move her to a home. To sell her flat they renovate it, and as they rip out the carpet in the hallway close to the door (some kind of runner, nailed to the floor, I suppose), they find an envelope, yellowed with age, underneath it... yep, you know the rest.
This is of course the story that
Vinny's father's ship lost in the post reminded me of. It's so saaa-ad!
Are you okay, biddies...?
dry your eyes
(Look at the dog's embarrassed grin when he returns the wet hat!)