SIMPLE REMINDERS

 

Note Pad, Jamestown NC

A marriage is a partnership between two soulmates as they both navigate their way through a shared lifetime.  For some like my neighbors that journey can last eighty years or half that time for my wife Karen and me.  She departed this mortal life sixteen years ago.

It should be no secret to anybody that making a lifetime partnership work takes commitment and work.  It doesn’t simply glide along without any bumps along the road.  And there are times of stress and tribulations where the little things can become irritable.  And it’s so easy to look back on those things with incredulous wonder as to how they were even considered a bother.

Karen and I spent many hours shopping in malls and quaint little gift shops browsing for something in particular and nothing in particular.  On many such occasions, Karen would spot a set of note pads that were the personification of the Holy Grail.  And I would spot her purchasing them before I could sound the alarm reminding her that we already had cornered the market on note pads and amassed a lifetime’s supply!  Those small purchases really didn’t amount to as much of a fuss that triggered a response from me.  After all, she wasn’t sitting at home and acquiring large blocks of Enron stock. 

A few years ago, I rounded up all the unused note pads scattered in drawers and shelves around the house and consolidated them in my office.  And every day since then I have been drawing from the cache and using them for grocery lists, note taking, weekly golf pairing lists, passwords, increasing reminders, etc.  And every time I use one of the “lifetime note pads” it reminds me of her.  So, it seems my misplaced objections were actually priceless, simple reminders of her for the future.

"Grief is a giant neon sign, protruding through everything, pointing everywhere, broadcasting loudly, 'Love was here.'

In the finer print, quietly, 'Love still is'."

 ~Heidi Priebe

LATE AUTUMN SIXTY YEARS LATER

 

Memories, Olathe, KS

I stumbled upon a small treasure trove of yellow tinged type written papers while sorting out saved relics of the past.  The earliest hand written one involved a dream I had as a boy about The Last Day.  The remainder must have been written during my college days, perhaps for English classes or just for myself.

 One titled Alone was about a man with an airplane that found himself the lone survivor of an apocalyptic nuclear world war (The first two atomic bombs were used not long after I was born).  This copy was typed without revisions and had a nice red “A” at the top.  The others must have been first drafts with hand written revisions.  Another titled Tempest of the Kerkyons involved the nightly activities of a group of young men who were involved in a high-speed car crash.  The title came from a fictional book on a rite of passage for young men in ancient Crete Minoan courtyards of tempting fate by jumping over charging bulls.  

One typed draft I had saved titled Late Autumn involved “The soft light of a harvest moon and a quaint old man who was quietly sitting on a park bench engrossed in his private world of memories”.  That one was a bit of a show stopper because it was almost prophetic.  Had I actually been writing about my own future sixty years ago?  I have a meditation bench by my Lenten Rose Garden.   

“His solemn face calmly witnessed the placid environment while the moonlight sharply contrasted his soft white hair with the dark complexion of his shadowed face.  He was thinking of his wife now.”  “One fall night, very much like tonight he had met Mary.  The light illuminated her fair complexion and accented her youthful smile.  His weary face slowly formed a picture of contentment and joy as he remembered her as she had been that night.”  “He had known then that she was the one thing which life could hold for him.  Apparently, she had sensed it too, and they were married later in a quiet chapel on the outskirts of the big city.”   

And that was almost the way life went down, except that her name turned out to be Karen.

FORTY YEARS TOGETHER

Larry and Karen Wedding, 1968, Olathe, KS

APRIL 20, 1968-APRIL 20, 2008

My wife Karen and I celebrated our forty-year anniversary three months before breast cancer took her life as I held her hand.  So, it was no small coincidence that when I casually heard the lyrics to a new release of a Jason Isbell track on my Google home device that my head snapped around and it had my full attention.  The title of the song is If We Were Vampires which on first blush makes no sense whatsoever.  But I downloaded the track from The Nashville Sound and began to understand the lyrics.  The songwriter has known life, and the common destiny we all share, and this song needs to be shared by every couple on the planet.  Once I comprehended the lyrics, I understood the title:

"If we were vampires and death was a joke,

I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand…

Maybe time running out is a gift.

I'll give every second I can find."

I’ve had previous conversations with friends and couples about the elephant in the room when they come to realize later in life that barring a tragic accident, one of the two of them will some day be left to carry on without the other.  That realization can take the sting out of any petty offense or argument that is presently irritating them.  Neither should ever go to bed angry.  Of course, we’ve been given life to live to the fullest and we should do just that.  And if the time comes when one is left to spend some time alone, we should honor that bond and carry on, knowing that this life is only a finite segment of our existence and death is simply a transition from time to eternity.  And that spiritual existence is one spent in the presence of our creator with our loved ones in that beautiful forever.  Our time apart is relatively short in that context and it's only paused for a season.  Ironically, the refrain of the song says it all:

"It's knowing that this can't go on forever.

Likely one of us will have to spend some days alone.

Maybe we'll get 40 years together.

One day I'll be gone,

One day you'll be gone."

ON BEING SOUL MATES

Soul Mates I, Destin, FL
Soul Mates II, Greensboro, NC

Helen Reddy had a big hit song in the 70’s with “You and Me against the World”. She was actually singing to her child, but Kansas City’s own R&B diva, Ida McBeth, most assuredly has the most soulful cut for soul mates. The lyricist must have known a lasting love to pen these words that struck such a cord with so many including my wife and me. It’s pretty obvious when you look around that being married isn’t necessarily synonymous with being soul mates. A soul mate has your back and has your heart. A mate is one of a matched pair. You spend years together through all of life’s mountains and valleys, all of life’s triumphs and failures, all of life’s joy and tragedy. And all the while, you are two independent and sometimes head strong individuals who have resolved to become one flesh, one soul—one day at a time. That fusion of spirit is tempered in the crucible of everyday life when it does indeed many days seem like it’s you and me against the world. And soul mates never give up on each other.

I like the very real image of “we seldom get our due and when the day is through, I bring my tired body home and look around for you”. Because when the slings and arrows of the world around you seem to have almost beaten you down, it’s uplifting to come home and converse with your soul mate to sort things out. Then you have the spirit and energy to start the new day with the resolve necessary to try again. Life is truly not as much about getting knocked down as it is about getting back up as many times as it takes to persevere. And our creator understood that it’s good to have a soul mate there to reach out a supporting hand to pull together and keep your life between the ditches. As the lyrics continue, “for all the times we cried, I always felt that God was on our side. And when one of us is gone and one is left alone to carry on, well then our memory will have to do; our memory alone will get us through. I’ll think about the days of me and you, you and me against the world”.

We’re making memories every day of our lives in this world whether we’re conscious of it or not. And I guess we are seldom aware that these present moments may just be the ones we later cherish the most. So, make the most of your present moments together with those you love and the memory of these days will bring you much comfort and peace in the sunset of your life.

“Marriage is not a simple love affair, it's an ordeal, and the ordeal is the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one.”—Joseph Campbell