Wylie & Trish shortly after we married
I met Trish at the Feast of Tabernacles in Tennessee in 2001 — and even before I spoke a word to her, the setting itself said something. I wasn’t in a bar, or a workplace, or a random social event. I was at God’s Feast. I was standing in the middle of a commanded assembly, surrounded by people who shared the same beliefs, the same hope, the same spiritual language.
And there she was — already in God’s Church, already walking the path I had been called to walk.
It wasn’t just timing.
It wasn’t just circumstance.
It was alignment.
For the first time in my life, I met someone whose spiritual foundation matched my own. Someone who didn’t need convincing, or coaxing, or explaining. Someone who didn’t resist the truth or stand outside of it. Someone who was already living it.
My earlier marriages had taught me what spiritual mismatch looked like.
This one showed me what spiritual unity felt like.
Trish and I built a life that was different from anything I had known before. We were together every day — not out of obligation, but out of closeness. I retired, and instead of drifting apart, we grew closer. We raised her granddaughter together, giving that child stability, love, and a home shaped by God’s way of life.
This marriage wasn’t just a relationship.
It was a covenant lived out in daily life.
Trish and I shared:
• the same beliefs
• the same holy days
• the same hope in the resurrection
• the same understanding of Scripture
• the same spiritual direction
There was no tug‑of‑war.
No spiritual tension.
No competing doctrines.
No resistance to truth.
For the first time, I experienced what God intended marriage to be:
Two people walking the same spiritual road, facing the same direction, with the same God at the center.
Our marriage lasted exactly 22 years — to the minute — beginning and ending on December 20. That kind of symmetry doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the kind of detail that makes one stop and realize that God was in the timing, the shaping, the sustaining, and even the closing of that chapter.
I cared for her through difficulty, through endurance, through the long arc of life. We didn’t just stay married — We stayed faithful. We lived the covenant, honored the vows. I finished the race with her.
And when she died, it wasn’t the end of a marriage.
It was the completion of a covenant.
This marriage wasn’t like the first two.
It wasn’t a lesson.
It wasn’t a preparation.
It wasn’t a test.
It was the fulfillment.
It was the marriage God had prepared me for — the one that matched my calling, my faith, my understanding, and my spiritual identity.
Trish wasn’t someone God was “working with.”
She was someone already walking the same spiritual path.
And He brought the two of us together at exactly the right moment, after everything in my life had been shaped, refined, and cleared for that purpose.
This marriage wasn’t just part of our story.
It was the chapter where everything finally aligned — spiritually, emotionally, and covenantally.
Life with Trish was different from anything I had known. She was an amazing person. She was also an exceptional dancer, and I felt outmatched on the dance floor. While I was still living in the trailer in Clute, I drove to League City once a week for dance lessons so I could dance with her.
She was also a strong tennis player and competed in the women’s league. I could play, but she was better. At the Feast of Tabernacles in Kelowna, Canada, we played at the resort where we were staying. A man stopped to watch us and later said he just wanted to see how much punishment I could take.
The amazing thing about my wife was that she understood the calling of God — the promise of eternal life in the God Family at the first resurrection. There were no disagreements in beliefs. We were in harmony from the start to the finish.
Every year we traveled to the Feast of Tabernacles. Kerrville Texas, New Braunfels Texas, Lancaster Pennsylvania, Lake Harmony Pennsylvania, Hawaii, Kelowna Canada, Santa Rosa, California, Barbados in the Caribbean, and Orange Beach Alabama, were among the places we visited. We never settled on a favorite site. We also attended the Barn Dance in East Texas each year and occasionally the Boot Scoot dance in Dallas. The Barn Dance was memorable because they hired square dance callers. They taught us to square dance as we danced. So much fun.
After we married, I continued working as a project estimator until retiring from Dow Chemical in February 2007. I continued to work for Dow from home as a contract estimator until November 2008, when the administration changed and, once again, we had poor management in the White House, and working from home ended. I then worked for the Shaw Group, Technip, and finally a Koch Brothers engineering firm. We had a wonderful life and enjoyed our home and working on the property. It took a lot of mowing to keep it looking nice, and eventually, the work became too much for us. We decided to downsize and sell the property. We had placed the property on the market for two years and finally found Janell Calliham, Realtor, and she had it sold in two weeks. We bought a home closer to Conroe, but still in Montgomery, in the Highland Ranch Subdivision in October of 2010. Trish had her stroke in June of 2015, and I retired fully to take care of her.
Trish. October 21, 2015
Not long after her stroke, we became responsible for her two‑year‑old granddaughter, McKenna.
McKenna Joy Nelsen @ 2 yrs. Old
She became the joy of our lives. We raised her without legal custody at first. Her father, who had custody, lived in California and died in October 2018, though we did not learn of it until February 2019. We filed for custody, and her mother, who was living in Florida, signed over her rights without a fight. In June 2020, the court granted me and Trish custody. Her mother came back in 2022 and tried to gain custody of McKenna, but the court did not see it that way, so she continued with visitation rights — supervised at first, then unsupervised after two years of clean drug tests.
We loved McKenna deeply. When she turned twelve, in May of 2025, she wanted to live with her mother.
McKenna Joy Nelsen @ 12 yrs. old
Trish and I were aging, and I knew I could not care for her much longer, so we agreed, but it broke our hearts. Things were very good, at first, and we had a good relationship with McKenna’s mom, Shelley, until Trish died. I found out how much discontent; to put it mildly, Shelley had for me. Of course, she blamed every bad thing that had happened to her on me, and she stopped letting McKenna contact me anymore. I still have a 50/50 joint managing conservatorship with her, but I am not going to push that. I pray that when McKenna is old enough to understand what happened to her Nana, she will try to find out.
Trish’s stroke-induced dementia progressed. She fell and broke her foot, and after a hospital stay, she was placed in a nursing home for rehabilitation. The care there was poor. The staff was not trained in dementia care, and their handling of her was rough and frightening for her. Her son threatened to sue me for the power of attorney. He did not understand that St. Luke’s Hospital had assigned her to that “skilled nursing facility”, and if she didn’t stay for the full 20 days of rehabilitation, Medicare would not pay. After he had threatened me with a lawsuit, we walked back into Trish’s room, and she looked at him and said, “I don’t see any love in this room. You need to get along and love each other”. He backed off on the lawsuit.
When the nursing home stay ended, I moved Trish to The Magnolia Woods Memory Care in Conroe. It was a new facility with dementia‑trained staff, and they treated her very well. She struggled at first but began to adjust. The Memory Care staff loved Trish and took special care of her. When she moved in, there were only 7 residents in a 16-room facility, so she got lots of attention. We even danced again — just a simple stand‑and‑sway — but it meant something to both of us.
My last dance with Trish to The Everly Brothers’ song “Dream” In November 2025
“T”, one of the wonderful staff members at The Magnolia Woods Memory Care Facility, is dancing with Trish, and Trish blows a kiss.
Thanksgiving changed everything. Her daughter wanted to take her home for the holiday. Trish wanted to go, so I agreed. After that visit, she never fully readjusted to the facility. Her decline accelerated.
Her family accused the facility of neglect and filed several complaints. Each one was investigated and dismissed. The facility warned that if the disruptions continued, they would have to evict her. I wrote a letter restricting family visits. When Trish could no longer swallow, her family demanded a feeding tube and IV fluids. I refused. I would not prolong her suffering.
By then, Trish no longer recognized anyone. I stayed with her increasingly. On the evening of December 20, 2025 — our anniversary — at 7:22 p.m., she was pronounced dead. We had been married twenty‑two years to the minute.
Our church family supported us throughout those years. Their guidance helped us through decisions that were often difficult. McKenna, who had been in Florida, visited her Nana during Thanksgiving. After returning home, she began calling and demanding that I take Trish to the hospital for a feeding tube. When I explained why I would not, she became angry. I eventually ended the call. She has not spoken to me since.
Trish’s family was hostile to me. They accused me of murdering Trish because I would not allow a feeding tube or an IV to be placed. After receiving counsel about feeding tube in Alzheimer dementia patients, I was told that a feeding tube and an IV might prolong Trish’s life for a few days. It would not fix her dementia, only prolong her suffering. She would have to be restrained from pulling the tube and IV out, and that would have been more torture.
I had already paid for mine and Trish’s funerals and arranged for burial sites. Because of the hostile environment with Trish’s family, I told her son that they could have the funeral at Cashner’s Funeral Home. I did not need any more of their insults. He took me up on my offer, and I later learned that they had spread their hatred to the guests at the funeral, claiming that I had murdered Trish.
The problem was that they had neglected Trish in her later years. They were too busy to spend quality time with her or understand what dementia was doing to her. They would visit for an hour or two once every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes every three or four months. Trish would pine for their visits that never came, and when they did, it was almost a hi‑and‑bye. Her daughter and her family in Oklahoma would come and spend the weekend with us because of her daughter’s job in Conroe. They would all be gone all day and just use our home as a motel. Trish was declining quickly, and they refused to see it or understand it.
My family had the graveside service, and our brethren at church gave Trish a beautiful memorial service. Her son was not the son he should have been. He should have honored his mother’s instruction to love one another and stopped all the hostility. But he didn’t.
Trish and I were blessed in our marriage, to the very end. We never stopped loving each other, and we both kept the vows we made to God on our wedding day. She still holds my love, and may she rest in peace until tomorrow morning, the day of our resurrection into the Family of God.
Closing Reflection
Looking back across the years recorded in these pages, I see a life shaped more by endurance than by ease. Nothing came without effort. Nothing stayed without being held onto. The path was rarely straight, and it was never simple, but it was mine to walk, one step at a time.
I lived through drought, hardship, and the breaking of a family before I was old enough to understand what any of it meant. I learned early that life could change without warning, and that the only way forward was to keep moving. I made mistakes, faced consequences, and carried responsibilities that forced me to grow long before I felt ready. I also saw God intervene in ways that were unmistakable, even when I did not yet know how to name them.
I became a husband three times, a father to three sons, and later a grandfather. I lost relationships I valued and fought for relationships I refused to surrender. I learned what it meant to stand alone in courtrooms, in hospitals, and in the quiet moments when no one else could make the decisions that had to be made. I learned what it meant to love someone enough to let go, and what it meant to love someone enough to stay.
The greatest blessings of my life came in the little bundles of love God entrusted to me—my children, my grandchildren, including McKenna—and in my marriage to Trish. None of those relationships were effortless; each one required patience, persistence, and the steady work of showing up even when it was hard. With Trish, I knew harmony, shared faith, and a companionship that lasted until the very minute God chose to end it. Caring for her in her final years was not a burden; it was the fulfillment of the vows we made. And the same truth has guided me with my children and grandchildren as well: love is proven in action, not in words. Whatever the cost, I have no regrets about the choices I made for them, or for her.
If there is a lesson in these pages, it is not about strength or success. It is about persistence — the quiet kind that does not draw attention to itself but keeps going anyway. It is about faith — not the kind that shouts, but the kind that endures. And it is about the simple truth that a life does not have to be perfect to be meaningful. It only must be lived honestly.
This is the record of my life as I lived it. I leave it here for my sons, for their children, and for anyone who may one day want to understand the road that led to them. Whatever comes after this, I rest in the hope of the resurrection and in the promise that the story is not finished.
Not The End / June 11, 2026