I woke up this morning with an irresistible need to write.
The kind of urge that won’t let you focus on anything else. And you know me—once the urge strikes, I have no choice but to obey. There is no way around it. Even though it can feel a little imprisoning, it is also like nothing else. It is pure love. Pure life. I don’t think there are words big enough to fully describe that feeling.
All it took was a message from a faithful reader to stir me up and set my imagination in motion.
The story they’re referring to is a short love story I wrote many years ago for Valentine’s Day. I shared it on my blog back then, and since it didn’t receive many comments, I quietly placed it on the back burner—where so many things we care about end up waiting.
But stories, like love, don’t always stay where you put them.
This particular story—like all the stories I write—was inspired by real people. A real couple. Unfortunately, their real-life story never received a happy ending, so I wrote one for them. Sometimes, that’s the only way I know how to cope: by giving love the ending it deserved.
So, for the reader who reminded me… and for the story that refused to stay silent—
Here it is.
MY HAPPY VALENTINE
By Sanela Ramic Jurich
Three days after their wedding, Emira Basic kissed her husband, Aydin, goodbye. A soldier who was set to rejoin his military unit. The young couple believed they would soon be together again, ready to begin the joys of married life and raise a family.
But when Aydin returned home from his military assignment, he found the house cold and empty. When he called his wife’s name, only the echo of his own voice answered him.
Emira was gone.
Under the brutal regime of Slobodan Milošević, Emira and her family had been declared enemies of the state. Aydin’s new bride was sent to a concentration camp in Prijedor, with no chance to contact her husband. He didn’t even know if she was still alive.
Months later, Emira was freed and forced to move away. She didn’t think she could survive without Aydin—but in the end, she had to. It was the most miserable time of her life.
Aydin spent years searching for his lost love, never finding a trace of her. Time passed. Life moved on. Both Aydin and Emira remarried and had children, yet neither ever forgot the other.
Aydin yearned for Emira—the woman he had loved and lived with for only three nights.
Years later, both of their spouses passed away. In 2011, Emira, now a lonely widow in her late forties, returned to the old house where she and Aydin had spent those precious days together. She wanted to pay tribute to that short, stolen time, believing she would never see her husband again.
But fate had other plans.
That very same day, another long-lost visitor arrived in town—a middle-aged man who had come to lay flowers on his parents’ grave. When he caught sight of the woman across the road, he knew something far greater had drawn him there.
“My eyes are playing tricks on me,” Emira whispered.
She watched a familiar man approach her, his eyes fixed on hers. Her heart leapt. She knew. And then she cried—tears of joy.
Aydin.
The man she had believed she lost twenty years earlier.
He ran to her and said, “My darling, I’ve been waiting for you for so long. My wife. My life…” He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Though life had carried them elsewhere, she had always been the true love of his life.
After a few stunned formalities, Aydin took Emira’s hand. “I’d like to show you something. Would you take a drive with me?”
She smiled, slipping her hand into his. “Where are we going?”
“It’s a surprise,” he whispered.
And it truly was.
He couldn’t stop grinning. Emira noticed and kept asking what was going on, but he only smiled and drove on. She didn’t care where they were headed—as long as they were together.
Soon, the surroundings grew familiar. She knew exactly where he was taking her. She smiled and sighed as the sun began to set.
When they arrived, Emira gasped.
Back when they were teenagers in love, this secluded field deep in the woods had been their place. Far from everything. Hidden. Beautiful. They had come here to love, to talk, to laugh, to cry—to live.
“Oh, it’s so beautiful,” Emira whispered.
“I knew you would like it,” Aydin said softly, gazing at her. For twenty years, he had returned to this field, caring for it, tending it. It was the only place where he ever felt close to his long-lost love.
“How did you do this?” she asked, stunned.
The field before her was filled with blooming red roses, as far as the eye could see. Emira cried softly in awe.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful in my life,” she said.
Aydin only smiled.
“How did you do this?” she asked again.
“Oh,” he said gently, placing the softest kiss on her lips, “I had some help from Cupid.”
Emira smiled.
Emira cried.
Emira laughed.
Aydin took her hand and dropped to one knee.
“Will you marry me—again?”
Emira cried through her smile. “I’d be a fool not to.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Aydin said, grinning.
They married that same year.
To this day, Emira and Aydin still hold hands, still kiss, and still drive to their field often. Love, for them, is always in bloom—forever.
That message found me at exactly the right moment.
It reminded me why I write in the first place—not for numbers, not for noise, but for that one heart that remembers a story years later and carries it quietly along.
I’ve learned that my stories don’t leave me when I stop sharing them. They wait. And sometimes, they return when I’m ready to listen again.
This one came back as a whisper.
And I listened.
Author Sanela Ramic Jurich