Just two months after his second anniversary, Eric Lanktree, 25, died in a motorbike accident.
His wife Vanessa, now 29, was devasted.
Eric was her childhood sweetheart and she thought they would have the rest of their lives together.
On their wedding anniversary in 2016, Vanessa found herself putting on her wedding dress to remember their big day and a new tradition was born.
The following year she wore the dress in the yard of the house they had shared and this year, she posed in a sunflower field, with her new boyfriend Kurtis Isbister, 29, snapping the pictures.
Vanessa, of Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada, said: ‘It’s my way of celebrating and remembering that special day and keeping Eric’s memory alive.
‘Most people get to go out with their husband for supper or a date night on their anniversary and this is my thing that I get to do without him.
‘I try to do it on our anniversary or as close to it as possible. I will probably do this every year for the rest of my life.’
Vanessa and Eric met at school and soon became high school sweethearts.
She added: ‘We had such an amazing relationship. We met when I was in grade 10 [aged 16] and he was in grade 12 [aged 17].
‘He was my first boyfriend, my first love. Our relationship through the years was so strong because it started so young. I had no doubt about our lives together.’
They got engaged on Christmas Eve 2011 and married in September 2012 in a church ceremony.
Vanessa added: ‘As I walked down the aisle with my dad, Eric was bawling his eyes out.
‘I already knew I wanted to marry him but when I saw him crying, I thought how lucky I was.
‘The best part of our day was being surrounded by our family and friends. At the reception, we did not leave the dance floor. If anyone wanted to see us or talk to us, they had to dance.’
But on 3 November 2014, Eric died in a motorbike accident, while on holiday with friends and his father, Brian Lanktree, 55, in Las Vegas.
Vanessa said: ‘Eric always went down to Vegas for the SEMA car show. That year they decided to rent motorbikes and head down to California. The accident happened on the way back.
‘Eric was an hour outside of Vegas and there was a head-on collision with a truck that took his life. I couldn’t believe it.’
When Brian called Vanessa and told her that Eric had been airlifted to a hospital, she held out hope for her husband’s life.
She said: ‘I thought it would be alright. I kept thinking: ‘He is strong. He is a fighter’. I didn’t realize how severe it was.
‘I was packing my bag to go to Vegas because I thought he’d need to see me when he woke up.
‘When my father-in-law called me and told me that my husband had passed away, I just threw my phone and walked out of the house.’
When the second wedding anniversary without him came around in September 2016, Vanessa found herself putting on her bridal gown.
The dress still had dirt from the dance floor on the bottom and Vanessa put on Keith Urban’s song ‘Making Memories Of Us’, a track which was played at her wedding.
She danced around the kitchen, remembering their special day.
‘Grief doesn’t go away but somehow you find little things to help you cope, like putting on your dress,’ she said.
The next year she put on the dress again and posed for a picture in the yard of her home, a house she and Eric had built together.
In 2018, she took a simple snap of herself in the gown.
This year, she asked Kurtis, an electrician in the oil industry and her boyfriend of 18 months, to take pictures of her in a field of sunflowers.
She explained: ‘It was a little chilly but I love those sunflowers. It felt so fun. I had my rubber boots on and I was running around while Kurtis took photos.
‘I was just being me. Life doesn’t stop and it pushes you forward. We still want to find happiness in our lives. I know Eric wouldn’t want me to be miserable.
‘He was such a happy person. He taught me to look for the best in life.
‘I’m never going to get it cleaned and I am never going to have it boxed up. As long as it fits me, I’ll wear it.’
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/05/widow-takes-pictures-wedding-dress-every-year-honour-late-husband-11045624/
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