17166.4 DAYS
17166.4 days is what we had together. Sound like a lot? It wasn’t.
When I look back through the backward lens of time, I realize it may be a lifetime for some, but for me, it was a blink. Today, many people are lucky when they make it to their twentieth anniversary. They marry later in life, and most of my friends haven’t stayed together for the thirty-year mark.
I met my husband when I was sixteen, and I know it was love at first sight on both sides. On our first date, I told him I was going to marry him. We just clicked. We slid into a place as though we had been together forever. I finished his sentences. He knew what was on my mind before I did. Some may say I was too young to know the difference. I knew he was that other half.
I married young, twenty-two to be exact. I would have married my husband earlier, but my parents insisted I finish college.
He was starting a new venture and needed help. I quit my job teaching and agreed to help him with the business if we could start a family.
Our twenties were filled will building our business and family. We created our nest, filled it with our chicks, started a bunch of ideas, and ran with the one that had the most promise.
We had nothing, lived on practically nothing, spending whatever we had left on our budding family.
From the protective home of my parents, I leaped into his arms, poverty and the hungry years were romantic. We enjoyed each victory, every triumph as a celebration of our joint forces. It was fun.
By our mid-thirties, we arrived. Money flowed, and to our astonishment, one of his notions was a success. We worked together, assigned to the role we were best suited to do, helping each other excel.
The sky was the limit and every day dawned exciting. He took me places I never imagined, and no, I’m not talking about other countries. He showed me possibilities. He taught me that the only thing that limited me was my fear. He made me feel safe, secure, and loved and that permitted me to step out of the comfort zones of youth. I flew with the best of them, knowing he was nearby, his eyes watching, ready to catch me if I faltered.
The forties were tough, with cancer and a heart attack for me. It tested us. I had never seen him scared. He weathered it, bringing us closer still. He took care of me, making sure I got well, and by the end of that decade, our well-ordered life started to crumble. It started with parents, falling like soldiers, one by one, and capping the end of the ten years with his diagnosis, his cancer trumping mine ten-fold.
The fifties passed in a blur of treatments. I was losing him. He lived, but I lost him. The cure destroyed his life and took away his hope. His temper and impatience, his worst attributes took center stage, making life impossible. He became cranky and unreasonable. Where before, I was able to influence or cajole, he saw me through eyes narrowed with distrust. Some say it’s “cancer brain.” I don’t know, but our lives changed. In the past, days sped by in a roller coaster of excitement, now time slowed to sludge, each day a testimony to his disappointment and anger.
Against impossible odds, he survived. Some credited my steadfast devotion; I place it on his indomitable will and the doctor’s ingenuity. Our sixties dawned like a stormy day filled with thunder and uncertainty. Like a sinking ship, each season brought more leaks, health issues cropped up, and he was tired, so tired from fighting.
He raged and was impossible. I don’t blame him; I was pissed as well. Where were the golden years we were promised? Why wasn’t our life like one of those ads, where old people walk off into the sunset, holding hands? It ended in a bloody configuration, and he went out like the lion he was, his fragile lung hemorrhaging from the last assault.
It was over. I’m sad. The promise of the beginning withered and died until our hopes and dreams scattered like dried leaves.
What’s the moral of the story, you ask? Carpe Diem. Seize the day. Love like it’s the last day of your life. Enjoy and cherish the seconds. They will not last forever.
What makes Phyllis’s reading different from the other mediums? She understands grief and loss.
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