Anniversaries Don't Die

Anniversaries Don’t Die

Dec. 3, 2019: Sean and I would’ve celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary today, December third, in the States (yesterday in New Zealand). We only made it to ten years because he died. I like to think we’d still be together, but it’s easy to make these assumptions with a late spouse. In death, we are who our loved ones imagine us to be - steadfast, funny, smart, kind… In a domestic relationship between the living and the dead, there is no arguing about who’ll clean toilets, take out trash or taxi kids. There is only perfection refracted by the aging angles of memory.

We married on a misty Friday evening in the glow of candlelight at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Cleveland Heights. He, at 38 years old, still looked youthful in his tuxedo and boutonniere; I, at 29, carried an enormous bouquet of crimson roses and wore a dress with beaded bodice and train. Full of hope and promise, we had no idea what would come later - a premature baby whose kidney was removed shortly after birth; a rambunctious younger brother who would challenge our patience throughout his life; and much later, acute illness that would land Sean in intensive care, wired, tubed and ventilated. 

When I said, ‘I do’ that December third, I said, ‘I do’ not only to holidays, romantic dinners and house hunting but also to signing consent forms for a comatose spouse, taking notes about his medical condition and brushing his teeth. I nearly fainted when, at a rehabilitation hospital, a nurse detailed step-by-step how I would do a wound dressing change once we brought Sean home for good. That never happened, because Sean didn’t make it home.

Focus on the good years, not the awful months, is what they say. Mostly, I do, remembering trips Sean and I took together to Europe, Mexico and Canada. Someday, we said we'd do like one of his high school friends and live down under for a year. If Bob could move to Sydney, maybe we could, too (however, Bob’s an economics professor at a university and had a much clearer pathway for migration than we would ever have).

Poet Roy Croft wrote, “I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.” Sean made me feel special, valued. Nestled in his laid-back vibe, I could (nearly) relax and not take life too seriously. He was my counterbalance. My best high school friend summed me up then and now when she said I moved at “Mach 3 with your hair on fire.” Sean was my anchor and extinguisher.

He was also the only adult male in my life who offered constant reassurance I was neither inadequate nor too much. In Sean’s eyes, I was successful in my career, a good mother, friend and wife. He never told me, explicitly or implicitly I was hard to love. Admiration was mutual: Sean was an excellent father who stayed home with our babies, then toddlers and preschoolers, while I worked full-time. He didn’t rage or allow his temper to flare, but when troubled, would express quiet disappointment. To most people, he kept feelings inside. But he could unburden himself to me.

Sean’s sense of humour was like a beacon cutting the fog of early parenthood. “They’re monsters!” he’d exclaim when someone would ask about our toddlers. Sean would ask parents of older children, “When do they turn on you?” I’d be pleased to tell him that at ages nearly 16 and 14, the kids have not rejected me, though they roll their eyes with embarrassment at much of what I do.

Grief has no expiration date, because every day I live is a day that should’ve been spent with Sean. The future I had imagined with the man I married December third, 1999 is happening without him. It will continue unfolding without him.

People die. But love never dies, and neither do anniversaries.