Til Death Do Us Part
Party or not, we’re together now
Many thanks to Promposity for the new February contest! Go over there and check it out:
My wedding redefined my life. It truly was a new beginning, a step forward into an alien world full of wonders. Now with our children — the strange creatures — it seems idyllic.
But it wasn’t always so. Not long after joining together, serious and mysterious illnesses drove us apart. One after another, stranger and stranger symptoms.
Black mold. You know, the kind everyone vaguely talks about, the kind the Russians have a bioweapon made of for inducing suicide and hyperanxiety in a city. That black mold. The one with a million different faces for a million different victims.
At first we denied it, but when I opened up the wall and saw it I despaired.
My wife dropped to 89 pounds, then almost died from the meds we were given that were supposed to help her get better, and I wrote little journal entries as I sat alone in a borrowed spare room praying she would get better but facing the fact that she might not:
It is strange. Any food fills the belly, any carpet covers the floor, any light fills the eye, any shadow darkens the door.
It is strange. I do not have words to fill the gap where you should be, the aching cavity in my teeth that I remember with every bite of food and every smile I muster and every word that issues from my throat.
It is strange. To be alone, again. To speak for only me, to feel so soon neglected by sympathy and sympathizer. To have the freedom I once gloried in and fantasized of having more.
It is strange. Were you my albatross, my cage? No, you were my freedom. Now I feel the chains, the gutted rind of my life about me as I sink into the trash of financials and timid cards without a stroke of pen and meal bar wrappers because I cannot face the stove nor turn away even a shred of remembrance nor fail to stand and deliver to the dogs of the world.
It is strange.
She’s writing about it a little now, which is great. What’s even better is that we are still working side by side. Through these few short years, the thought of losing her has overridden the celebration of our union in the first place.
This year I get an anniversary where we can both sit at the table, both enjoy the food, both share the moment and the celebration of our struggles and our unity. We are powerful people, skilled in our own right, but together…
Together we are strong. We are one. We came together and here we will stay…
to have and to hold…
for better or for worse…
for richer or for poorer…
in sickness and in health…
to love and to cherish…
as long as we both live.
We came close. Less than a year after our honeymoon and we were already in the waves, tossed from that blissful ship of dreams into cold reality. Now we are finally dry again.
This anniversary will be my proudest yet. To have pulled through, conquered, unbroken.
But together.
Tell me about important anniversaries in your lives. Join in the challenge, Squadron-Fire-Hawk-23, Laura Ohlman, Angie Taylor (Mama SWAN), and Granolamommie!
