I contemplated writing a blog about our wedding weekend and all the wonderful, crazy and (one or two) disturbing things that happened. I asked my Facebook friends to share their favorite memories of our wedding weekend and aside from a few normal comments, the bulk of the responses were about some naked guy who was running down the road with a case of beer late into the night before the wedding. That might be a blog post for another day since it's the first time I'm hearing that particular story.
Instead I'm going to be a bit more contemplative and introspective, something I haven't done in a while on here. I've been thinking a lot about what I have and how lucky I am, but more importantly, how easily I take it all for granted.
The day before our anniversary we got some really great news. A friend of ours who had spent eight hours that day in surgery due to cancer received the miraculous report from the doctors that the cancer was not as bad as they thought and that he had a much better prognosis than initially expected. I heaved a sigh of relief as I'm sure did the other hundreds of friends and family who were reading the same report from his wife on Facebook. I realized that I'd been holding my breath all day, waiting to find out what the prognosis would be.
Then I realized that if I'd been holding my breath all day, his wife must have been holding her breath a hundred times harder. I started wondering what I would do if I were in that same situation, if there was even the remotest possibility that I might lose the person I'd built a life with. It's a scary thing to think about, and I'm sure an even scarier thing to experience. I'm thinking I would have held my breath until I passed out.
Fifteen years is a long time. I'm grateful for every single minute of it.
John has taught me how to be a better person. I've learned how to curb my tendencies to overreact due to his calm presence. Don't get me wrong, I still flip out every now and then - but it's less frequent.
He helped me weather the worst time of my life, the two years during which I watched my father slowly (then quickly) decline due to ALS and then finally succumb to the disease almost two years ago. There were days when I wanted to crawl into a giant hole in the ground and never come out. There were times when I lashed out at whoever was closest to me because I didn't know what else to do, and quite often the one closest to me was my husband. He too has suffered the loss of both of his parents, one suddenly and one slowly, so he had some insight into what I was feeling.
Don't get me wrong - there are times I wish I could see him just completely lose it, just to show me I'm not the only one who occasionally becomes unhinged. But then I realize that this is why we work so well together. It's all about balance.
We have the same issues as any married couple. We disagree about things, but these things are minor. We don't have knock-down, drag-out fights. We don't scream and yell at each other. This may work for some couples, but it doesn't work for us. I've given him the silent treatment before but it rarely lasts more than an hour or two. I can't stand not talking to him.
I want to grow old and gray together. I want us to see our kids grow up and become their own people. I want us to babysit our grandchildren together, travel the world, retire at a decent age and enjoy our later years. None of this is guaranteed. I thought my parents would live this dream and God had other plans. I can't understand why, but I do know that life goes on. I just hope and pray it goes on and on for the two of us together.
Fifteen. In the grand scheme of things, we may just be getting started.
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