Today is our 21st wedding anniversary. If our marriage wanted to publicly consume alcohol, it may legally do so now. And I think it may.
But not today. Today our marriage wants to celebrate by staying in and eating this. Pictured together, but eaten separately.
My husband of 21 years is sick with one of those bugs going around. But I dressed up for work just in case he was feeling better and wanted to go to dinner when I got home. He was willing but common sense prevailed.
I gave him his gift in the plastic bag I brought it home in, changed into my sweats, and thought about what I would make of this anniversary with no flowers, dressing up, or dinner out. After shrugging off disappointment and completing a quick mental review of other disappointments (because we do that, don’t we?), I will tell you my conclusion is different than ever before.
It’s different because yesterday my grief support group for spouses learned that one of our newest members took her life. She missed her husband so desperately and could not imagine living even one more day without him. She received ongoing and tireless love and support from our members: Phone calls, texts, visits at her house and theirs, lunches, dinners, and walks with people who have been there and are there—and yet we could not take away the one choice she chose.
Today, we grieve together and ask ourselves all of the same questions. What a comfort we receive in one another as we face the limits of our power but never, ever our love.
Marriage is not Hallmark movies and walks on the beach. At least not always or even most of the time.
Sometimes it is being left behind and losing yourself afterward. Sometimes it is weeks (months?) of ships-passing-in-the-night dotted by fleeting moments of profound connection. Sometimes it is caregiving or being disappointed. Sometimes it is splitting up so you can cart kids to different places at different times on different planets. Sometimes it is being grateful for Alzheimer’s disease because it gave you the opportunity to be together 24/7 for 15 years, along with the realization that without it you would still have been working (and apart). Sometimes it is years of living together followed by years of living alone. And sometimes it is eating chicken noodle soup by yourself from a cardboard bowl on your 21st anniversary.
When you do life with married people who have been left behind by their spouse, you’re grateful for however you can get it. You know how profoundly interwoven two lives can become and you know how separation leaves every thread bare and aching.
And because you know this, you can be content on a rainy anniversary—knowing that not grieving the one you love is gift enough. Except when you’re wishing for a little bit more, at which time you can remember he de-bones the chicken every time without being asked and a hundred other things just like it, because he loves you every day and not just on the special ones.
