"Love in the Great Pine Woods" by Gratiana Lovelace (2015-2016) (Completed)

Ch. 48 End (PG-13, D): Life Lessons and Legacy

"Love in the Great Pine Woods", Ch. 48 End (PG-13, D):  Life Lessons and Legacy, 
August 08, 2016 by Gratiana Lovelace  (Post #950)

(An original story copyrighted by Gratiana Lovelace; all rights reserved) [(1) story cover, left]

[From time to time, I will illustrate my story characters with: Richard Armitage as Sam Wakeforest, Marcia Gay Harden as Sam's older sister Tessa Wakeforest Shoop Delaney, and Emily Deschanel as Tessa's sister-in-law Olivia Delaney Wakeforest, Viola Davis as Pauletta Perkins, Cicely Tyson as Nellie Newton, Anna Sophia Robb as Alice Trent, Kevin Spacey as Roger Delaney, Sam Heughan as Todd Wakeforest, Idris Elba as Dominic Perkins, the late Polly Holliday as the Waitress Madge, Donald Sutherland as Aldus Warren, Teri Polo as Lillian Warren, Ewan McGregor as David Warren, Noah Lomax as the 5 yrs old Daniel Wakeforest, Soleil Moon Frye as the 5 yrs old Ellie Wakeforest, a young Tom Cruise as Drew Wakeforest, Alexis Bledel as a 16 yr old Suzie Wakeforest, a 24 yr old Richard Armitage as 20 year old Daniel Wakeforest, and others as noted.]

Author's Content Note: "Love in the Great Pine Woods" is a mature love story with dramatic themes of love and relationships. It will mostly be at the PG and PG-13 movie levels. Specific chapters or passages may have a further rating of: L for language, D for dramatic emotions, and S for sensual themes. And I will rate the chapters accordingly. If you are unable or unwilling to attend a movie with the ratings that I provide for a chapter, then please do not read that chapter. This is my disclaimer. And as is my habit, I will summarize the previous chapter's events at the beginning of the next chapter.

Author's Recap from the Previous Chapter: Unrelated by blood due to Alice being adopted, cousins Alice Delaney and Drew Wakeforest marry. But due to Drew's Air Force pilot training, they are separated for the first four months of their marriage—but for short weekend furloughs when Alice is able to visit him—and then he is shipped out, first to an air base in Illinois and then overseas. Drew is injured in an explosion while in Viet Nam and his lower left leg must be amputated. Alice is devastated for Drew, but grateful that he is alive. And she and her father-in-law Kevin Wakeforest bring Drew back home from a California military hospital that he had been airlifted to. Though worried that he has lost sexual function, Alice and Drew share a creatively loving romantic tryst when they return home to convalesce at their Uncle Sam's and Aunt Olivia's home's first floor master suite.

"Love in the Great Pine Woods", Ch. 48 End (PG-13, D): Life Lessons and Legacy

In the months following his homecoming due to his military injury and honorable discharge in the Spring of 1962, Andrew Drew Wakeforest—son of Sam Wakeforest's next older brother Kevin--spends many hours each morning on grueling physical therapy and rehabilitation as he accustoms himself to walking with a wooden prosthetic lower left leg. Though his afternoons were his reward as he and his wife Alice spent time together—especially enjoying looking forward to and planning for the birth of their first child. And this child will be Alice's and Drew's respective parents' first grandchild. So there is much anticipating and pampering going on.

Of course, their little Wakeforest cousins are delighted—the then six year old twins Daniel and Ellie, four year old Joshua, and two years old Suzie, the children of Sam and Olivia Wakeforest. The twins especially remember their Mama Olivia's growing tummy when she was pregnant with their younger sister Suzie. And Alice's growing belly is a source of wonder to them. And that following Christmas with Drew walking on crutches as he gets used to walking with his prosthetic lower left leg, he and Alice welcomed their first child, a daughter they named Jacqueline—after the nation's First Lady, Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy.