This is the story of how a navy ship departed with something meaningful on board, but arrived months later with that item unexpectedly on shore.
A story that begins, Shaelynn Ross says, after meeting Scott Coulson in high school.
“I asked if he wanted to go with me to prom and he said, ‘No!‘” Ross recalls with a laugh.
“It stung, and I have not let him forget it ever since.”
Ross is joking. It was fine, she says. They were just friends, that is until years later, when they unexpectedly reconnected and became best friends.
“We would just stay up all night talking endlessly and laughing and giggling,” Ross says. “And you could just be vulnerable right off the bat.”
“Every day was just a good day,” Coulson smiles. “[and it got] better and better every day.”
Every day for more than a year, until one day.
“I looked up at him and it [was] just like hitting me in the gut,” Ross says. “I love this man.”
A man who was also falling in love with this woman.
They embarked on a romantic relationship, just before Coulson, who serves in the navy, was deployed on a mission to the other side of the Pacific for six months.
“Leaving for any amount of time is no fun,” Coulson says.
“Especially when you’re in love.”
Before they said goodbye, Coulson started making a secret plan.
It included asking his partner’s parents’ blessing to marry her, buying an engagement ring he then kept safe in his locker onboard the ship, and flying Ross to Japan for his Christmas break, where he arranged a surprise proposal.
“The full body electric jolt I got seeing him down on one knee was indescribable,” Ross smiles.
Coulson had arranged for a photographer to hide in the Japanese garden and captured the moment of the couple on a stone bridge, surrounded by trees with golden leaves.
“I had this whole thing planned out that I was going to say [but] everything was lost when I went down on my knee,” Coulson laughs.
“And I just said, ‘Will you marry me?‘”
“And I said, ‘Yes! Yes! Yes!‘” Ross smiles. “‘A million times yes!‘”
The answer was then followed by a billion goodbyes as Ross had to return to Canada just days later, and Coulson had to continue his mission for another three months.
“It was a tough goodbye, her leaving,” Coulson says.
But that only made him arriving back home, after half a year, more meaningful.
“Being able to wrap my arms around him and being able to hold my fiancée, it just felt incredible,” Ross smiles, before showing pictures of them embracing on the jetty, her engagement ring prominently featured.
And that’s how a ship that departed with something special on board, arrived home with it being worn by someone special on shore.
