The 448 Valentine’s Day Proposal

February 14th, 2015

My anticipation was on high, as I knew I was making a move I had been contemplating for months.
I was hoping all would go as I had envisioned.

This day I was preparing to convey to my longtime companion Anne Coleman, my desire to make a serious commitment formally to our already long term relationship.

I would on this Valentine’s Day make a formal proposal of engagement!

It’s hard to believe it’s been over 8 years since we first met on what was for both of us our first & last ever blind date, arranged by an accessories manager named Tom, at the now long gone, yet still infamous Cycle World Motorcycle Dealership that was one of my major accounts in Toronto.

I’d like to start by stating that I’m in no way ashamed to mention, I’ve been married twice before and still to this day have a fine, supportive and friendly relationship with both my ex-wives, each of which of these relationships lasted exactly 7 years.

The second of these two marriages produced my amazing son & daughter, Owen & Amelia Jaggard.

Now 22 & 20 years old respectively.

My how time flies by!

During the 6th year of my relationship with Anne, we used to joke around that she only had a year left based on my previous history, but I think deep down, we both knew that our relationship was strong.

Now in our 8th year and heading towards our 9th anniversary together this coming September, I thought this plan to propose, if anything was overdue!

Well this story is not so much to inform you of our intimate relationship details, but more to present to you all again, the interesting anomaly of my Angel Number as some would call it… THE 448.

As many of those close to me know, the crazy way these 3 digits show up in the circumstances that occur in my life, especially for those like Anne who are very close to me, it’s truly uncanny.

With this impending important event in our lives about to unfold, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised to see the 448 anomaly rise to the occasion again, challenging the skeptical minds, of those that maybe do not share my philosophy that…

Nothing Happens by Chance, Luck or Coincidence!

Here’s what happened…

On Saturday February 14th, Valentine’s Day I woke up early and began my preparations of organizing and cleaning the house. Anne had planned a special dinner to occur on my dining room table that is usually covered with much of my daily work materials so today it required a cleansing.

Once all was cleared away I began the setup of the beautiful Orchid I had bought the night before and prepared my card, & unwrapped the special candles I had bought, then proceeded to take some photos.

The ring I had purchased only 4 days earlier after attending a special event at the Stone Road Mall in Guelph was included in the photos.

It was at this event that I personally chose the Ring that hopefully later that day would be accepted and worn into the future by Anne.

Now speaking of Anne, she was at this time getting her hair done at a salon in Mississauga.

I was expecting her to arrive early afternoon. Anne had been prepped by me previously that her Valentine’s present would be the return of her beloved BMW GS700, but by this time, I think she must have been expecting not to see it as due to the week’s weather conditions she thought I may not have been able to pick the bike up, but in reality I had.

Well since I had never confirmed this fact to her I decided to play a little prank.

I had the perfect prop to pull this off!

The Sprinter Van was in the driveway and although this isn’t good news I had noted the day before that my muffler had snapped in half and could clearly be seen hanging only inches from the snowy driveway. This would be my prop to clearly explain how I couldn’t have gotten her Beemer back!

So by around 1 pm I had all prepared within the house. It was now time to get outside and begin my major job of busting out the Honda snowblower and getting to work on clearing my Trials Riding Trails. It was my intention to ride sometime over this long weekend created by the Family Day Holiday which fell on the Monday. Maybe “after” reading this Story watch this YouTube video of my Winter ride fooling around with Anne in the snow. To add to the atmosphere if you wish, simultaneously activate the Van Morrison song in video posted below.

Now back to my story.

I must say that this job of prepping the Trial Track was welcomed, so I could distract my mind from the nervousness I was feeling about my intended proposal plans.

You see my intention was to make this Valentine’s Day really special for Anne. I had planned on going all out with a full down on one knee proposal accompanied by a memorized customized poem. This poem written by a famous Lebanese Philosopher by the name of Khalil Gibran, which was a favorite of ours, was actually gifted to me as a wall hanging cloth by Anne a few years previously also on Valentine’s Day.

I also had planned to play one of her favorite love songs by Van Morrison entitled… “Have I Told You Lately”.

It was also my intention to blend the lyrics of this song into the whole Poem Proposal, so needless to say I was practicing in my mind continuously as I repeated it all, as I was snow blowing my Trials Track.

OH THE TRIALS OF LOVE…

Soon Anne arrived, but by this time I was committed to the job at hand. We smiled and waved to each other, but I must have continued for another hour or so, to take the trail grooming job to completion. Then I entered the house to call to Anne to come see my handy work and begin the BMW prank by showing her the broken muffler hanging from the Sprinter Van.

Anne fell for the spoof hook line & sinker as I got her to come outside making up this crazy story that after the muffler broke it slammed into the ground and pierced the underside of the van putting a hole in the floor that she needed to see to believe!

OMG I’m so bad!

Well the spoof was soon forgotten as the sliding side door was sprung open to reveal her perfectly groomed BMW adorned with all the accessories that she was gifted with at Christmas and even further items since then.

The bike truly did look amazing.

Anne nearly tackled me to the ground in her excitement and as usual couldn’t believe I had pulled the wool over her eyes again, with my innocent spoof.

It was truly heartwarming to see her reaction though, as after we unloaded the bike we spent a fair bit of time drooling over all the details of the changes once it was back inside my downstairs Man Cave!

It was about this time that, time became a factor, as it was my intention to do our Valentine’s gifting at 4:48 pm and I had now only 40 minutes till that deadline.

I still said nothing to Anne other than ask if she had seen her Orchid upstairs on the dining room table, which indeed she had and Anne loved it.

After a very quick shower & shave, I dressed in some nice clothes and thought I would just suggest to Anne that we open our cards at 4:48 pm. Anne was quick to say that’s a good idea. So all was set!
With only 5 minutes to go, I was in the bedroom, down on one knee proposing to the Wall Cloth that displayed the poem, silently praying that I remember all the words!

I walked out to the dining room and after Anne commented, somewhat embarrassingly, about me being all dressed up, as she was still in her same clothes.

I reassured her that was totally unnecessary and that she looked beautiful just the way she was, which to me was true!

We both looked at the clock and could see it was now 4:48 pm exactly, so I took control of the situation and suggested she should give me her card first and the bag she had brought with her gifts. So we sat at the dining room table but first I suggested we play some background music which of course was the Best of Van Morrison CD. Again I had to tell a little white lie by saying that her favourite song unfortunately was not on this particular CD as it was my intention to play it only after my proposal for maximum effect.

Well as usual, Anne’s gifts were right on the mark! In particular, she gifted me a book that she originally purchased in November as a Christmas present, but decided at the last minute to save it for Valentine’s Day.

It’s interesting to note here as well that the book she saved for Valentine’s was not her first choice as the copy she really wanted was sold out. Not knowing much about the author, Anne just chose another title and this is where the interesting part lies as you’ll see shortly.

The Book she gave me was THE PROPHET by guess who… KAHIL GIBRAN… the very same Author of the poem I was preparing to recite! Well if that isn’t interesting enough, wait till you hear what happened later in the wee hours of the following day. We’ll get to that soon.

In the meantime now all of Anne’s gifts had been received and it was my turn. So here we go…

I began with giving Anne her card, which went over very well, and already Anne was getting emotional.

I sort of lightened up the situation by telling her the funny story about the Candles & the Orchid as I showed her the pictures on my Blackberry of how while taking pictures in the morning I had failed to notice that the candle flame was too close to the plastic covering protecting the beautiful flower!

I had indeed almost ruined it as the plastic had melted right to the large beautiful green leaves!

What an idiot I was, I joked!

So after that distraction and acting as if I had nothing further to give her, as remember Anne thought the return of her BMW with all the extra new accessories was her only gift!

I then picked up the book The Prophet and fondly told her I had been practicing the poem about Love, by this same author, that was, as she knew, was hanging on my bedroom wall and asked her to let me recite it while slightly altering it, so that it would relate to us both as a couple.

That’s when it started… so to make this simple, here’s a photo of the poem I recited, with as I mentioned with a few minor alterations to personalize it…

So by now Anne is crying openly, and I’m welling up like crazy with emotion…

It was literally all I could do to keep my composure. I then said to her, I have one more gift for you.
It’s then that I open a cupboard located within inches of where Anne sat and brought out this Black & Silver Bag and immediately got down on my knee.

Anne is going crazy by now crying out NO, NO. NO, which wasn’t exactly the particular word I was hoping to hear at this time.

I could tell though it was more of a NO, NO, NO, you can’t give me anymore sentiment, so I proceeded with confidence and recited the Van Morrison lyrics with little alteration.

It went something like this…

Anne, I Love You – There is No One above You – You Fill My Heart with Gladness… You Take Away My Sadness, You Ease My Troubles, That’s What You Do…

I opened the Box to display the Ring and said…

This Ring is for YOU, It’s not a Promise Ring or a Friendship Ring… it’s to say I wish to spend the Rest of My Life with You.

Then in between the sobbing, all of a sudden Anne blurts out… Oh My God, I forgot to tell you!

Anne then proceeded to tell me, that after leaving the hair salon in Mississauga, a car drove past her that immediately caught her eye and it had a 448 on the plate with the proceeding letters that she placed in her mind as a word which was AWAD 448…

It came to Anne in a flash of imaginative intuition and she stated right then and there…

Anne Wears A Diamond 448.

Anne was still in shock & disbelief about the proposal, still crying, so I said … You haven’t answered me!

Does this mean your answer is yes?

Anne replied YES! Of course it’s YES!

Anne then directs me to place the Ring on her finger and lo & behold it’s a perfect fit!

Well to make a long story shorter, that fancy love dinner that Anne had planned to serve, well it never happened!

With all the emotions, Anne totally lost her appetite and it was the joke for the rest of the evening that I had to resort to eating some leftover take-out chicken wings from two nights before!

I couldn’t blame her as I was emotionally spent as well, and the combination of this event and my three hours of Trials Track grooming hit me hard later that evening.

We both went to bed early and fell asleep just prior to midnight.

That’s when things got a little strange.

At 3:45 am in the morning I awoke as if it I had already slept all night and I couldn’t get back to sleep at all. So I just laid in bed looking at Anne thinking how fortunate I was to be with her and how well the whole Valentine’s Day proposal had gone.

I still found it a bit annoying though that I couldn’t go to sleep, so I was thinking about one of Anne’s gifts which was a bottle of Baileys, so the urge was just too strong, so I got up to make a coffee with Baileys and began reading my new book THE PROPHET.

Well let me just remind you all, once again, about my firm belief instilled in me by my lifelong Yoga Teacher, the great Western Master of Yoga… Sir George King who stated emphatically…

Nothing Happens By Chance Luck or Coincidence…

As I’m reading the second chapter of the Book, which is listed in the index as, ON MARRIAGE, I’m totally amazed as I come to the halfway point of the chapter to begin reading a slightly expanded version of the very poem I had recited just hours earlier during my Proposal to Anne!

Upon completing the final verse and the end of the chapter I was so blown away that Anne had literally by default, as this was not known by her at all, that this is the book that contained this special poem.

The most amazing part though is that something in my inner self compelled me to look across my living room and what do I see on The Rogers Digital Box below my TV screen, but the exact time…

4:48 am

I dropped the book to my lap in amazement and without hesitation, I raised my hands in prayer, thanking God, along with my Yoga Teacher, Sir George King, the incredibly accurate guidance I had also received from the famous Book of Divination, I use and teach about, The I-Ching, The Book Of Changes, that lead me to this point, plus most importantly, whoever or whatever is behind my 448 anomaly.

It goes without saying that I was obviously guided into this new positive situation, and I pray that whatever the future holds going forward…

I hope that I’ll be fortunate enough to always have Anne by my side.

Just think, this all started with our one & only experience, of going on a Blind Date, all those years ago.

We’ve come a long way Anne!

Thanks Tom!

THE AMAZING EPILOGUE TO THIS STORY!

I had to let you all know that I began writing this story at 9:30 pm on Tuesday February 17th and nearly called it quits at 2:30 am on the 18th, but I persevered to continue and the first edit of this story was without a word of lie, (Bad Karma, so I’d never do that) was completed and saved at

4:48 am

Now the interesting part is at around 4:15 am I was at the point of needing to insert the pictures, which by the way were more than adequate, but not as extensive as this final version.

The point is that something occurred that I’ve never had happen before, the Downloading procedure of getting the required pictures off my BlackBerry to my laptop would not work.

In frustration it dawned on me that I could just e-mail myself the required photos and save them to my desktop, in order to perform the copy & pasting procedure.

Well as it turned out, without any conscious effort at all, I pasted the final picture which was the image of Anne and realizing at this point that the clock on my computer read…

4:48 am

I immediately saved the copy and sent the first edit to Anne, noting though that it was sent at 4.50am.

After one final read I went to close the computer down and it was only then, that I saw, the computer indeed had the evidence, which was the actual time clearly displayed in my 448 Stories file!

This brought a tear to my eye that made me Stop and Wonder…

Am I writing these stories, or am I being guided by my 448 Angel?

I’ll leave that for you to ponder, as well!

(see the following page to view the evidence to confirm this epilogue)

Here’s the photographic proof to validate this unusual epilogue. 

The Photo above that shows how I had to e-mail all the pictures from my BlackBerry to my Laptop.

The Photo above shows that the first edit saving to my 448 Stories file, did indeed occur…

@ 4:48 am

NOTHING HAPPENS BY CHANCE, LUCK OR COINCIDENCE!

This story, as are ALL my 448 Stories, is dedicated to my Yoga Master H.E. Sir George King, founder of The Aetherius Society who passed away on July 12th, 1997 at the officially recorded time of…

4:48 am PDT

Santa Barbara, California, USA.

Dear Master may you be Forever blessed for the Wisdom you gave, that allows me to recognize
Gods Wonders that unfold around me.

www.aetherius.org