VALENTINE WRITING COMPETITION | NARRATIVE ARC
I Want Two Wives in Heaven
Is polygamy in my future?
I didn’t even know I bought tickets, but I must have.
Because the lottery rewarded me twice!
Two lifetimes of riches beyond my dreams… one lifetime!
It’s November 15th, 1969 and I’m less than a month out of my teens. There’s a college retreat at the terribly misnamed but beautiful Leech Lake in Minnesota. It’s Saturday afternoon and supper isn’t yet served, so this almost man, still wanting to be a cool just-past-teen is sitting on a bench strumming my Yamaha guitar.
She sits down on the other end of the bench and begins singing along. I look up and life as I’ve known it is no more. Thoughts scramble, chords skew, music moves from head to heart. I surface recover, watch my manners and ask her name.
“Brenda” she says. Life is defined in the way she speaks it. Her eyes and the tilt of her chin promise more than I’ve ever dreamed. I am weakened, strengthened, determined and humbled in the hours-turned-moments of the evening that follows.
The next morning, awkward with our attempts at being adults in our not-quite-there-yet lives, we don’t know what to say to each other of hearts turned over in the evening past.
I loved her, but I had only known her hours.
It’s Sunday evening and I tell my father, “I found the girl I want to marry”.
It’s 2002 and we’re living in that part of Colorado that most people think is part of Nebraska. A lady shows up in town wishing she was in the mountains, but the community college she’s teaching at is on the plains. Brenda and Carma become best friends in Fort Morgan, where you can just barely see the mountains on a clear day. Great friendship. Carma becomes part of our family.
Brenda’s one of those wonderful people that can walk into a room full of strangers and light the room up in thirty seconds. She authentically cares about every person she meets. She might ask a banker how much money he makes two minutes after meeting him. He won’t even think twice — he’ll tell her and know it’s safe to do it. She was just that way.
Can you imagine the privilege it was to be her husband or one of her sons? She walked on water. It would be fighting words if you tried to tell any of us otherwise.
Carma and she were complements. Carma was quiet, soft-spoken. The room of strangers didn’t notice when she came in. But give it time and that same room would go ‘pin-drop’ silent when she would speak, because you knew if she spoke it was worth listening to. She knew her strengths and walked with confidence in them. Her integrity was carried deeply. You felt it. It was natural that she and Brenda became friends. Same character. With strengths that completed each other.
April, 2010, and Brenda and I are in that place you never want to be; a hospital room with a doctor who is having trouble looking you in the eyes because he has a message he doesn’t want to give.
“It’s pancreatic cancer,” he says.
Love this deep assures that loss will be deep as well. We got almost two more years together and I wouldn’t trade those years for a lifetime.
I grieved deep… and felt like the luckiest man alive, all at the same time. I still do. We had enveloped each other in love for 42 years and I got to be her husband for 40 of them.
Carma and I remained friends. We would meet for conversations and organization of my new direction in life.
She was amazing with the counsel that she gave.
Early January 2014 and I’m helping her with repairs on a rental house she owns. I’m off to Home Depot for supplies and ask if she wants to come. She hops in my Volkswagen camper van and I almost reach out to hold her hand.
Whoa! Alarms going off! What did I almost do? Why did that feel so natural?
I stumbled over that one in my head for a couple of weeks before I thought it might be better to get out of my head and look at my heart.
January 28th. We’re meeting at the REI Starbucks in Denver as she helps me plan my future. I suggest lunch.
Warm Denver winter day.
We hop on our bikes and ride to Mad Greens for a bowl full of good stuff and enjoy lunch while we talk. My mind keeps slipping to a different part of my future than we were supposed to be planning for.
I clear the table and come back and start stutter-stepping my way through the most awkward proposal that I wondered if she would be interested in.
“You know, I really don’t want to mess up our friendship, so please don’t let this question do that.”
After about five more minutes of hemming and hawing and talking about things like our age difference (11 years), I finally get out “is there any chance you might be interested in an experiment to see if this relationship could be something more than a friendship”?
I finally shut my mouth long enough for her to respond.
And she says “Possibly! …but there are two potential show-stoppers.” First one… “Will your sons be okay with it”?
Easy answer. Yes. They all know her and know how she loved their Mom.
Second one…
…but hold on a minute, I need to tell you a story.
It’s the end of October, 2011 and Brenda and I are with her parents celebrating her Dad’s and my birthdays. It’s just a couple of months shy of a stroke caused by the cancer taking her life.
She says to her mom, “I know Ben won’t listen, so I’m telling you. If I die, I’d love it if Ben would marry Carma.” She was right. I didn’t listen. But I remembered now.
Back to that second show-stopper: “Even though she’s gone, It feels really funny to date my best friend’s husband. I feel like I need her permission.”
Cell phones are wonderful!
I call my Mother-in-law. She says, “It’s about time.” I hand the phone to
Carma and Mom tells her the story.
It’s January 28th and I think we would have married in March, but we didn’t want to ‘one-up’ two other already planned family weddings. So we waited until September.
I held her hand at the end of that first week. It was a little awkward at 52 and 63. I kissed her on Valentine’s night as I’m dropping her off at the train station with a purple thermos filled with chai and a bucket list journal to write in. It surprised her! She often tells me about that after-first-kiss train ride and the story still warms every part of my insides.
She’s been my bride for over 8 years now.
Wow, it’s been good!
We’ve laughed and loved and planned life together. We’ve loved our grandkids. We’ve loved and cared for two sets of parents; Brenda’s and hers. We love our present and our future, and dream of walking it together.
We’ve even grieved Brenda together.
How does one man get so lucky twice?
I have no idea, but I’m hoping those religions that talk about Heaven being a place where you get multiple marriages are at least partly right.
I’d like two, thank you!
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