Mondays–V2E32–Look At Us

Vince Gill said it best:

Look at us
After all these years together
Look at us
After all that we’ve been through
Look at us

Still leaning on each other
If you wanna see how true love should be
Then just look at us

On this Monday, the Great Hunter and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary. To say we celebrated is probably an overstatement. We wished each other a happy anniversary and exchanged cards, but I have to say, the Great Hunter finds the BEST cards. I always had a problem buying a card for him because I needed one that said “You drive me crazy, but I love you anyway.” Hallmark needs to get on that. 😉

Twenty-four years may not sound like a lot of time to many of our friends who are coming up on their golden anniversaries, but both the Great Hunter and I have been less than successful in marriage in our lifetimes. We’ve each got a couple of divorces behind us, so to have lasted this long, is truly a blessing. Things haven’t always been good for us, in fact, we actually lived in separate households for about five or six years. We were together but we weren’t “together” (sort of like the house flipping divorced couple that says “we work well together, but we don’t work well together.) When I think of how these last ten years have blessed us, I can’t help but think of my brother and his wife. If the mother-effing cancer had not taken him, they would have celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary at the end of this week. I can’t imagine what her pain will be like on that day which should have been a happy celebration. I still can’t really wrap my mind around the fact that he’s gone; gone FOREVER. To add another layer, Steve’s daughter got married last weekend. He was going to perform the ceremony, but instead, there was only an empty chair, occupied by a Stan Musial Cardinals jersey. I wasn’t at the wedding and I guess it was a good thing as the empty chair probably would have done me in. Seeing that empty chair reminded me of another empty chair 34 years ago. My step-father retired a couple months after mom died and his kids hosted a retirement party for him. He was seated at the head table and beside him was an empty chair. A chair where my mother should have been sitting if the mother-effing cancer hadn’t taken her too. I’ve never forgotten how when I turned and saw that chair it took my breath away. I had to leave the room because I couldn’t stop crying.

I guess that covers the good (our anniversary), the bad (Steve not being here for his) and the ugly (me ugly crying) of this week. But thinking of weddings, if it hadn’t been for these two people who met, fell in love and married almost 70 years ago, none of us would be here.