My Gift

Barely 4 months ago, Yvonne was to the point of not being able get in and out of bed by herself, had trouble dressing herself, couldn’t raise her hands above her shoulders, couldn’t lift anything of any weight. The cancer in her bones hurt nearly constantly; sneezing or coughing caused excruciating pain. She was deteriorating so rapidly that I knew she would be gone by the end of the year.

Today is our 29^th anniversary, the one I was sure we’d never have. Yvonne has her strength back. Her mobility is back to normal. And though considerable cancer remains, the pain is gone. Completely. And her energy level… as my friend Marc Miller says, “Holy Schnickes!”; she has far more energy than I do.

She is my Christmas gift. This anniversary is my gift. What more could I possibly ask for?

Happy Anniversity!

Every 17^th of December Yvonne and I look at each other and say “What in the world were we thinking, getting married in the middle of the Christmas season?” At the time, Christmas seemed like a wonderfully magical time to get married; each year afterward, however, Christmas has been a lousy time to try to celebrate an anniversary.

Last year we went to a very nice restaurant, and over the course of the evening’s chit-chat with the waitress it came out that we were celebrating our anniversary. At the end of the dinner she brought the check, and at the top had written “Happy Anniversary” – or so I thought at first glance, but when I looked again I realized she had misspelled anniversary and wished us a “Happy Anniversity”, with a big smiley face.

Even while we laughed about it we acknowledged that, in truth, there was a lot of adversity mixed in with the anniversary. Marriage and child rearing are not for the timid or faint of heart, and there’s a lot of wear and tear involved in making a relationship work long term. There were a few years when marriage was a hard slog, and a couple when we wondered whether it was worth the effort.

But 29 years later I can still say, as I’ve said before, that while I’ve never understood what lapse of judgement caused her to fall in love with me (see photo, above), it was the best thing that ever happened to me and I’ve been grateful for it ever since.

Happy Anniversity, indeed :)