Some thoughts on marriage

 

Jordan and Christian
married seventeen years tonight

I have not been married for some forty years, so I am not of the school that thinks a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle (I once said that to a man only to see him slam his fist on the counter in front of us and say, “Right!”—five minutes later, he came back and sheepishly said, “I just got it.”) At any rate, my personal thoughts on marriage aside, it is a delight tonight to offer congratulations to Jordan and Christian on their seventeenth anniversary. As I said on them on a card today, they make marriage look good.

Christian staged their anniversary evening carefully—they went to the Amber Room, that secretive cave for cocktails at Wishbone & Flynt. Then it was home where he cooked lobster, shaved Brussel sprouts, and mashed potatoes. In what I thought was a really sweet approach to family, they included Jacob in their dinner, down to the lobster tail (that kid who can be a fairly picky eater loves lobster, crab, and shrimp—he’s not a cheap date!). Meanwhile Jean and I ate chicken hash and artichoke hearts in a sauce, and I didn’t think either were my best successes. But they were okay, and we had lots to talk about and catch up on.

But the day’s events have made me think about love, marriage, and loneliness. My friend Babette Hale is facing her first Christmas alone after the death of her husband, beloved Texas columnist Leon Hale who died at ninety-nine last spring. She posted a column today about being alone and yet not really being lonely (The Book in the Drawer (bookcracker.blogspot.com) and, as I wrote her, it spoke directly to me, even though I am not a grieving widow. My ex-husband died some eight years ago, and while I mourned because of a lot of good memories, it was a far cry from losing someone you’d lived with and loved up to the moment.

I am of course at the age where a lot of my women friends, both close and personal and online, are being widowed. And I am watching how some handle grief. I admire those who can clearly grieve and yet carry on with life without a lot of dramatics. Jean has always been clear about that—she loved Jim deeply, she wishes he had not gotten Alzheimer’s and that life had taken them in a different course but given the reality she will carry on. And as she said to me tonight, she feels he is always with her. That is a kind of devotion that makes me almost envious, though there is one man from my past that I think is always with me—as I am with him.

Today I talked to an old friend who lost her husband recently. We have been distant since pandemic, okay really since trump’s election, but I felt the need to call her and voice my support, let her know I had been thinking of her. To my surprise—relief? —she sounded upbeat, hearty, laughed at a few things. She said, “I miss him desperately,” but she was carrying on with life, has already moved into a condo in the building where her daughter and son-in-law live. My admiration is great, and I am hoping we can renew a forty-year friendship.

Some women bleed all over the internet about their grief. I wish I could comfort them. I even wish I could understand them. I want to preach: get ahold of yourself, move on, treasure the memories but have some respect for yourself. Truth is, I am not in a position to do that, because while I have loved more than one man, some deeply, some on the surface, I have never lost a true love to death.

But loneliness I know about, even though I have the most supportive family network any woman could wish for—four children, their spouses, seven grandchildren. We spend Thanksgiving, Christmas, Mother’s Day, usually Easter together, and without their support, I would not be living independently in my cottage (hats off to Jordan who really makes it possible). But still, like Babette, I know that I am alone, that I am responsible for myself. It’s a strange time of life, and one in which I think each of us makes that choice: I will be happy, or I will be sad.

I remember my mom in her eighties (which I where I am now) saying, “All my friends have died.” I’m not quite in that sad a place, but it’s a problem for me to grapple with. And sooner or later, for most of us.