How Dearly Beloved saved my life

1986.

Dearly Beloved had just returned from a peacekeeping stint in the Middle East. During his three week leave in November of 1985 he had asked me to marry him. My crappy lungs didn't matter to him..he asked me anyway.

We were young and in love...and I couldn't wait to start my life with him.

In late December I began having some problems with my hands. The first two knuckles on my right hand were always swollen and hot and both hands would swell, making my new engagement ring hard to remove. I was also losing weight rapidly and seemed to be always tired.

In January, I had a few blood tests. DB was sitting on the sofa in my parents' TV room when I took the phone call from my doctor...Rheumatoid Arthritis. Twenty-four years old...and the rug had just been pulled out from under my life.

My only knowledge of RA came from visiting an aunt in California two years earlier. The disease had been particularly cruel to her. She could barely walk, was rail thin, and her joints were twisted and distorted. This was my future. This was the future the man I loved faced...if he stayed with me.

I hung up the phone, slipped the engagement ring from my hand and passed it to him.

"You knew about the lungs before you asked me to marry you. You couldn't possibly see this one coming. I know this is going to end badly and you will be stuck caring for a weak and crippled wife. You don't have go through with it...there's no hard feelings if you walk away."

He didn't say a word, just took the ring and put it in his pocket. He didn't say anything for the rest of the day as we went around running a few little errands...him driving my little SUV because my hands hurt too much to drive.

He didn't say anything until nearly midnight.

Just before he left my parents' house to return to the army barracks for the night, he fished the ring out of his pocket, took my left hand, put the ring back on it and said,

"For better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, health...I'm staying."

That was the night I decided to fight for my life...that was the night I was saved.

On July 10, 1987, I strolled down the main aisle of the Basilica of St. John the Baptist...there were flowers, a choir, a trumpet player, 300 witnesses, a ridiculous confection of a wedding dress that had been inspired by Princess Diana and Bridesmaids inspired by Scarlett O'Hara (and incredibly, they all still speak to me).

But most of all...there was Dearly Beloved...smiling as he waited with the priest...waiting for me to finish my victory walk...

He stayed.

Sometimes heroes don't wear capes...and have no idea how to leap tall buildings in a single bound...sometimes they just quietly save a life...

I wrote this for him a few years ago...after a particularly dark chapter in our lives that had both of us questioning whether either one of us wanted to stay any longer...thank God we retreated from that course...

Treasures

Today is the day
We gave our lives
Into each other's keeping
Locked in the treasure trove
That beats deep within each of us.
Precious gifts to be guarded
From cold hearts too willing to steal
And forces
Too willing to destroy.
Two candles once lit
Now burn as one light
Tempered by time
From hot flame
To warm glow
We no longer look the same
But can look at our children
Seeing shadows of where we have been
In the mysteries of where they will go.
While we keep moving forward
From that day in the past
When we whispered "I will"
Your life is still
The treasure I keep
Safe in my heart
'Til my heart stops beating.

Happy Anniversary Darling

Dearly Beloved...and Gene Kelly?

T1 had been camping with friends all weekend and arrived home about an hour ago. He strolled down the driveway wearing a fedora that we had never seen among his clothes before.

He explained that it was belonged to a friend of his and that the friend's mother wasn't really happy about the hat on her son's head. So when she arrived at another friend's house on Friday to pick up her son, he tossed the hat at T1 and said, "You keep it for the weekend!"

Well...some kind of discussion arose among me, Dearly Beloved and T1 on the subject of hats...the details are irrelevant, but at some point I suggested to T1 that he should just go out and buy himself a hat if he liked it so much.

"What kind of hat is it?" Dearly Beloved asked.

"I think it is what you'd call a fedora?" T1 answered hesitantly. He retrieved the friend's hat and parked it on his head. Now, if you are a Canadian female of a certain generation if I said that T1 looked like Joey Jeremiah from the Degrassi Junior High series, you'd know what I was talking about right? But Dearly Beloved being neither female, nor a fan of the old series I figured the reference would be lost on him. So what I said was,

"Looks good on him, doesn't it? Kind of makes him look like a young Gene Kelly?"

DB sucked back the last of his beer and smiled that evil little smirk that still turns the knee caps to jello and said.

"You know I'm related to him right?"

"Who? Gene Kelly?"

"Yup"

"You mean 'Singin' in the Rain', dancing around the light pole Gene Kelly?"

"Yup...Elvis too."

"You're related to Elvis Presley?" T1 chimed in in disbelief.

"Yup...Mom showed it to me on the family tree once...there are Presleys and then there is the connection to Gene Kelly...it's like 10th cousin three times removed or something like that."

Well clearly, whatever irrigation ditch was attached to the gene (no pun intended) pool it siphoned the singing and dancing genes away from Dearly Beloved.( That is not being disrespectful either...I'm sure Gene couldn't strip anything electronic down to its components and then re-assemble it in perfect working order).

But T1 CAN sing..and he's got a great sense of rhythm (but chooses not to use it) and T2 is quite a good dancer and choreographer....hmmm...do ya think....? Nah...he's gotta be pulling my leg right? Maybe? Maybe not?

The Phone Call (or what my co-workers heard)

It was the last day of corporate tax season. The office was bursting with activity, desks were piled up with files and papers, everyone was pushing out the last returns and cheques in anticipation of having the next day off. It was pure focus and drive with not a thought to the world outside

Then the phone on my desk rang.

Caller ID showed it was one of the Ts. Here is my side of the conversation...the part my co-workers heard.

"Hi baby....

You did WHAT?

What colour?

Who?

When?

Why?

Where did you get it done?

Who bought it?

Sorry for asking again...but WHY?

Okay...I'll deal with your father."

When I hung up, my three co-workers were laughing hysterically.

"Okay, you're side of the conversation was so funny, you HAVE to tell us what is going on!"

It seems T1 had let one of his lady friends dye his hair...jet-black. He then let his sister straighten it so he had kind of an emo/Pete Wentz look going on.

It looks good on him. It suits his artistic nature, his inner rock star. His friend and T2 did a good job.

Dearly Beloved eventually came onside...especially after I pointed out that the phone call could been worse...he could have been calling me to tell me about his new tattoo or his new body piercing. It could have been the police calling to say that he had been arrested for being drunk or high out behind the school. It could have been the emergency room telling us he was bleeding and broken on a stretcher. It could have been an unhappy father calling to tell us that his daughter was "in trouble".

But it was only hair...and hair grows.