When you've been married forty-five years you almost don't remember what life was like before you were married, it is such a big percentage of your life. I keep trying to do the math (quit laughing): 19/65. Is that, like, 7/8 of my life that I've been with this same guy? Well, okay, it's not the same guy. We've both changed so much, so many times that it's like someone new all the time. It's never boring, that's for sure. And yet, that old thing about "the two shall become one flesh", that's true too. We are like two halves of a whole. Especially when it comes to memory. Dennis says we share one brain. One of us is always saying "You remember when..."
"Harry?"
"Yeah, Harry. Remember when he..."
"Knocked the mirror off the side of the car? It was the..."
"Dodge station wagon. He was here for a convention or..." And so on. It takes both of us to complete a memory or find the keys or take the right medicines. Don't get me started about driving!
We were kids when we met each other (fourteen and sixteen) and even before that we lived in the same community: same drugstore on the corner, same library, our mothers shopped at the same National Grocery Store. It's kind of like we were always together.
I know it's a minor procedure, this heart thing, but I don't want them to take him into that O.R. without me today. I'm supposed to be there with him. When they put that funny shower cap on him (to keep what hair he has under wraps in the "sterile field") and wheel him through those doors I'll probably hold my breath till they get back. We've been breathing the same air all these years, I'll just wait for him.
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While I don't usually write prayers, I must have once because this was in the things from 1979 that I found the other day, from another time when there was a health problem.. It seems very appropriate for today. We were married about 13 years when I wrote this. Feelings are still the same.
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He's my rock, Lord. I can't afford to lose him yet. We have come through so much, Lord. We have changed and grown and he has become a man. I'm not the only one who sees it. He is always the leader, the solver-of-problems. So many people depend on him. Especially me, Lord. Particularly me.
When I have spent all day till I'm in tears trying to decide between yellow wallpaper and green wallpaper, he says "Green" and it is always the right thing.
When the repair department has not heard a word I have said to them for three days running, he calls to be "firm with them" and is so nice and gets their names and they are laughing and are friends with him and they say "There'll be someone right out, will anyone be home?"
When it has been raining for what seems like a week and the kids are climbing one wall and driving me up the other, he walks in the door and suddenly it is a whole new day and there are lots of things to do indoors and they are fun when Daddy does them.
When I have been searching for an hour and a half for the error in my checkbook or my dropped contact lens he comes in and puts his finger right on the spot without even seeming to look for it.
When I call him at work when he's in a meeting with his boss to tell him I sideswiped the neighbor's pick-up truck with our new car he says "Are you sure you're okay?" before he says "How bad is the car?"
At night when it's cold he's my warmth. When I don't think I can go any farther he's my strength. When I am really down and there is no one I can talk to he's my friend.
He is all these things because of You, Father. When I met him he was a shallow boy and then he came to know You. Now he is trying to be in the exact center of Your will. He is the High Priest in our family, my spiritual leader. He seeks Your guidance in all that he does. He searches Your Word.
I know You gave him to me, Lord, and me to him. Let me keep him awhile longer. I want us to grow old together. I want him to be here until the boys grow up.
Please, dear Lord, please touch him with Your healing hand.
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Maybe I should retract that part about the boys growing up and us growing old together. We're there now. But I'm still not ready to lose him. Did you hear that, Lord?
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