My best friend, Dee, was helping me lace up the bodice of my wedding gown when we heard the sounds coming from another bathroom on the other side of the house. Dee looked confused, but I just smiled. I knew that sound. I knew that voice. That was my soon-to-be husband, singing his heart out in the shower just an hour before our wedding.
I took so much comfort in hearing him sing like that. Here he was getting ready for this monumental step and his heart was full of joy.
Ten years later, it still fills my heart with comfort and joy to hear him sing in the shower – and it takes me right back to our wedding day.
We packed a lot into these ten years: 3 degrees, 5 apartments, a bout with cancer, and longer period of healing from that battle, 14 emergency room visits, too many hospital overnights to count, and the most amazing little girl.
Today was our 10th wedding anniversary, and it was like a snapshot of the entirety of our marriage: It was a crazy day that included me being sick, taking Gem to school, picking her up from school, going back to the school for a conference with her teacher, going out to eat to celebrate our family, and stopping by the party at her school on our way back home. A busy, and at times overwhelming day full of ups and downs, love, illness, school, celebrations, learning, communicating, and just being happy being together.
I am in possession of most of the old photographs and do-dads from our family history, and on occasion, I rummage through those items and take a stab at getting some of them scanned so we have a digital record that can be shared around the country. Most of the pictures I rummage through are multiple copies of old school photos, but every once in a while, I find something interesting.
The pen doesn’t work, it’s 44 years old. Apparently, this is the pen that the best man presented to my dad, the groom, “for use in signing his life away.” This cracks me up. I wonder if he had any idea that decades later we would still be in possession of this pen and the card to which it was taped.
The card says:
Compliments of the Lee Museum of Warped Art and Hysterical Do-Dads.
Left on ancient dining able, believed o be the “Official Pen” use in ancient wedding ceremony. Given traditionally (for the first time) to the Groom fo use in signing way his life by the Honorable Best Man. Hmph!
And here’s the best man, Pete Lee, with my Dad. Dad is on the right.
This is one of my favorite photos from my parents wedding – Dad looking at his ring. I wonder what he was thinking.
I’ve been trying to carve out a little time each day to work on editing the photos from my brother’s wedding last October. *Hangs head in shame* Yes, I know it’s been such a long time. Since I got back on the bandwagon, I’m averaging about one photo a day, which means in the past week I edited four. Yeah, I’m just making all kinds of progress.
I was trying to get a shot of my brother here, but I just love the expression on my sister-in-law’s face. It says, “Hurry up and send me my wedding photos already.”
“Will you still love me if I get breast cancer and they cut off my boobs and my hair falls out?”
I should have known better than to ask the question, but I was insecure in our young relationship, and I craved the constant reassurance. Of course he put my fears to rest, along with all the other worst case scenarios I could think up.
Neither one of us imagined how quickly he would be called on to honor that promise.
And he did – he does every day.
With each step in the process – the diagnosis, the mastectomy, my hair falling out, the day he shaved my head – I braced myself for a hesitation, a pause, an ever-so-slight withdrawal. But it never happened. In fact, it was just the opposite. I think we are closer now, more in love, than we were before.
Six years ago today we stood under a tree and vowed to love each other for richer or for poorer, through sickness and in health. Damn if we didn’t nail poorer and sickness. But I wouldn’t dream of spending this time with anyone else.
You might think that with the cancer diagnosis and six months of treatment so far, this year was the worst of my life. It wasn’t. Not by a long shot. That dubious distinction is reserved for my years at Valley Christian School. This past year, cancer included, counts among the best years of my life. And that is because of my husband – and my baby girl.
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It’s a beautiful life.
