in sickness and in health

Sure health and wealth and party vibes are mostly what I love to remember when I think of my past three decades being married to this one. The pastel sunsets and dance floors, the brimming table with family laughing through the holidays and the nights of crazy merrymaking until we dropped, mostly documented with silly selfies and glam shots but nonetheless all seared into memory. Thanks to social media we can look like the rest of the shiny populous celebrating every coffee or salad in joyful glee. But the real test of this marriage, and I will say yours too, is how you creep through the hard stuff. Together we have buried all four of our parents. Mourned friends who passed too young. Lost our home. Lost jobs. Held our children as they shattered over breakups or disappointments. We have stood united. And fallen apart. Indeed we have for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, forged a solid bond.

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marriage in 30

This is our story, yes, a love story of 30 plus years, one I believe deserves telling.

People ask us, as people ask of couples who found each other despite bad odds, how did you two meet? Blind date, we always respond in unison. This gets a laugh or a loud what? and we pause, because beyond that agreed upon fact our two memories diverge. Remembering before we were a we is not easy after three decades riding life’s bumps and bends, those close calls and those definitive calls too.

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love needs believing

When I was a teenager I overheard my Grandmother saying very straight-faced, after being complemented on her 50th Wedding Anniversary, “Well they weren’t all good years.” I was slightly shocked to hear her admit that, especially in the midst of her celebration, but most everyone around who was married for any length of time nodded in agreement. In the ensuing years, I have come to realized that life often brings harsh challenges, sometimes a whole avalanche of them, and these can alter even the best of relationships. My spouse & I have weathered many such hardships, most certainly there have been periods when we weren’t sure we would survive. When COVID sheltered us this worry intensified because all I heard about via every social media outlet was the spiking divorce rate due to the lockdown. I started to obsess it would happen to us, but eventually I had to stop reading the negative news, focus on my present day, let go of the fear and the hype, and believe in what we have built together over the decades.

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