The Perfect Dead Husband

 

Judy from the Onward and Upward blog wrote about going to 60^th wedding anniversary party and she wondered how anyone could live with the same person for so long without getting bored. Then she wrote: “I guess you just start out, go through all the fights and problems and then, finally settle down and you get to be like brother and sister, or something--friends?  I don't really know what makes a long term marriage. Is it just habit? Neither one wants to rock the boat so...you just settle? Better to be together, even though you can hardly stand each other, than to be all alone?”

I left a comment about how I can understand what it takes to be together 40, 50, 60 years. “What we see on the surface,” I wrote, “isn't always a true reflection of what is going on underneath the take-each-other-for-granted layer. People might get annoyed with the little, day-to-day stuff like not picking up your dirty socks but still be loving and loyal on the bigger more important issues that keeps a couple together---common values, shared life lessons and experiences, and dedication to one another through the good times as well as the bad.” I found myself wanting to go back again and again to Judy’s blog and write more. But comment sections don’t have an edit feature---which I rely on heavily---so instead I'm expanding my thoughts here.

Don wasn’t perfect. I wasn’t perfect, but like the loyal widow that I am who knows that Don and I were true soul mates he gets more perfect as time passes and I get more imperfect. How could I, for example, yell at him for this or that grain of sand out of place on our beach when, now, I’d give anything to have him back with me to play with pails and shovels building castles with moats and turrets? But get bored? Maybe some (okay, maybe even a lot of) marriages and long-term relationships get boring but that is one word I could not and never did apply to what Don and I had. We were constantly laughing, supporting each other's half-baked ideas, and growing new interests in life to bring back to share in our relationship. We weren’t unique. Most of us do it but we don’t all recognize how important and enriching it is to share the daily details of our lives with another person. As loving widows, we do recognize it because it's the daily sharing that we miss the most.

Probably my the best example of the kind of daily sharing that kept Don and I from getting bored with one another can be found in something that happened while we were on vacation out west. Don liked to talk and I liked to read and one day he went into a gas station but he didn’t come back out for four hours. After the first hour I checked on him and he was sitting in a circle with local people around a pot belly stove topped with a coffee pot and they were all swapping guy stories. I could have told Don it was time to get back on the road and he would have complied, but instead I went out to the motor home and finished a book I’d been reading. Once we were on our way again Don had a great time retelling the stories he’d just heard and I had a great time giving him a book report, flushing out the characters and plot in great detail. It was the adult version of what happened when I got home from school each day and my mom would ask, “What did you learn today?” We might not have done big, bold things in life, but Don and I could always count on getting an A+ in sharing.

People do get stagnant in life, they quit trying to learn or experience new things. They quit communicating with the person they fell in love with and I can see how that wears on a marriage. To the outside world they might even looked mismatched. And don't we all look at other couples and think we can figure out what they do right or wrong? Maybe it’s because widows get more sensitive to the way other women treat their husbands but when I hear the way some women talk to their mates at the grocery store it really bothers me. Sometimes I’d like to blow a referee’s whistle and tell them both to knock off the petty bickering. “Does it really matter if he likes Colgate toothpaste and you like Crest? Buy a tube of both, for crying out loud!"

Why is it so hard for some people to find the compromises in marriage and maybe those couples who can't are the ones Judy was writing about when she said they just settle because neither wants to rock the boat to get out. If they can’t have their own way 100% of the time they pout and grow bitter with the years. But being "right" about every toothpaste-brand like issue amounts to winning a battle while losing the war. People need to have their opinions validated from time to time---especially spouses. Maybe I should get some business cards that read: Let go of the bickering or let go of your spouse, compromise or move on! and sprinkle them around like I’m a Highlands fairy on a mission to save all the bickering couples from themselves. Or maybe I should just mind my own business. All I know for sure is that my dead husband---like many others in the graveyard---gets more perfect as time fades out the imperfections and leaves behind a misty watercolor painting in my mind’s eye of romance, laughter, love, fun, deep devotion through the tough time and unwavering respect that transcends time and death. And somewhere in this last paragraph is a cautionary tale for all people who are still reading this and who still have a spouses. ©