"If we can make dogs happy, children happy, and even cats happy, certainly we can make adults happy, especially an adult we know very very well."

It was challenging last week, to be part of the conversation. I feel a little dirty now talking about it, but what came out was -

"Your husband is mean... to you."

Am I not to him sometimes?

"How can you stand for this?" "How can you let it happen?"

Sometimes I try to ignore it. Sometimes I become passive aggressive and sometimes I really do get angry. Why is this a problem? Nothing is going to change. My best hope is our circumstances do - and a little piece of myself, a deep wound will heal. That's all I can hope for.
Then came:

"You need to find another job"

WTF? Where? Doing what? With more restrictions, less pay, giving up the very laptop I'm typing on? I heard myself say, there isn't a pill that can fix what's wrong. If there is one, I don't think I'm the one who always needs to be taking it. Not working together won't fix it either. We've just hit a rough spot, it will pass. His father just died. Things will change.

The things we once found endearing about one another may become stale and irritating as time moves along. But, we continue to love one another.

This is what being married is like. It's not for everyone. It's very normal to fall in and out of love - which makes the bond stronger.

Some days I imagine slapping my husband when he says something really derogatory, as if in a black and white movie. We fight, he grabs my hand and kisses me with fire and passion.

Some days I feel so blue from a fight, I want to tunnel deep into the flannel of our bed with heaps of pillows - drowning my sorrows with a drug-induced slumber.

Where did my confidence go? When did I become just as mean-spirited? I try really hard to be a good wife, a caring person. Sometimes, I find it hard to care. Sometimes, the negative body language really gets to me, our egos get in the way when talking to one another.

Don't tell me I'm a victim - I'm not. It takes two people to be married. Tonight I've reread some marital wisdom from a couples book, recommend to us by our wonderful therapist.
I Will Never Leave You: How Couples Can Achieve The Power Of Lasting Love
Here is my summary of the last chapter The six promises of a real relationship

• I promise not to question your needs: We are all a little screwed up. Be relaxed about the human condition, take each other the way you are. Acknowledge that you each have separate needs, accept, commit to helping each other meet them.

• I promise to seek your peace: It doesn't mean shutting down the emotions or placing a limit on enjoyment. Peace is not an affect but rather a conscious connection with your core. It is simply a quiet decision about who you are, which you do not forget.

• I promise to put your happiness first: To carry out this promise is merely to practice the way love feels. Love has no fear. Start simply by guessing what you think would make your marriage happier, and put it first. Take care of your body and your emotional needs, yet still put your relationship first. Do kind, loving, nourishing things for each other throughout the day.

• For it is in giving that I receive: Do something just to be doing it, to bring light simply because there is darkness, to bring joy simply because there is sadness. It is impossible to relate and not have a relationship, but it is possible to have a marriage and yet wait forever for the relationship you want to come to you.

• And it is in helping you awake that I awake: People don't actually take on negative vibrations, they react to them with negative vibrations of their own - which continue for as long as they choose to continue them. Marriage is dependent on your trying to see your partner's deep innocence - until that vision becomes permanent.
  

• I love you; I bless you; I want to walk to God with you: A real relationship is perhaps the quickest and simplest path to the top of the mountain. There, in stillness and humility, Love shows us a great splendor that covers everything and embraces all. To take our partners hand is not a weakness, but salvation.
  

We cannot fix pain, sorrow, dying or death

"Day by day we are building for eternity ... Every gentle word, every generous thought, every unselfish deed will become a pillar of eternal beauty in the life to come."Rebecca R. Springer

My thoughts are cool, clear and crisp... as is the day outside: It feels and smells as October should - of damp leaves, chrysanthemums and wood burning stoves. A friend asked me recently why I don't let myself feel? I replied, "I haven't had the time." Today, is a day, I'm taking a time to feel.

Steven's father passed away Thursday, October 1st, 2009 around 2 p.m. in the afternoon. I feel a weight has been lifted from my heart. I've watched my husband walk around with a specific degree of hurt over the passed year. While he expresses his feelings differently than others, I could see how his fathers illness had impact on his being. I've known my father-in-law for 10 years, which was not long enough.

I do not know what it is like to lose a birth parent to death and I wish I could find more sympathy within myself. Death always has a way of putting your own mortality into perspective. I've always believed I'm food for worms. Our soul, having a life of its own, becoming part of the electrical collective... that is our universe. My heart aches to see physical decline of life, but it's natural - that I understand.

After giving my own grandmother a bath and dressing her for my grandfather's memorial service, I've seen how hard loosing a spouse will be. What I would look like in the bare flesh at old age. Each line, wrinkle, scar, bruise - the sagging of flesh from my bones, dry skin that easily tears. Aging scares me more than death. Never having a grandchild scares me even more.

I get extremely defensive of my husbands needs and feelings. He's a planner, if you tell him what is going on, make plans with him, he feels better. While plans change frequently, he is better equipped for a situation. Various times I find myself seeing him with a reasonable opinion and never being part of the conversation. In our own lives together, it is tremendously isolating to be talked at and never heard. Grief is selfish, dirty and cannot be shared equally. Over this time I've witnessed how we are too busy, consumed with our own feelings, forcing tolerance and ignoring others along the way. We stop listening to one another and tune each other out.

“I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken - and I'd rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken places as long as I lived.” -Margaret Mitchell

Own your martyrdom, don't try to pass the torch, you may be disappointed with the result. The effort to fix someone else is often met with inflexibility. Be a positive model and hope that facilitates change. This is hard for me, I want to fix things, people, animals... much of it beyond my control, especially loss due to death.

"Have you told your father you love him and are going to miss him?"

"I've talked to him."

I brought the DVD's of home movies his father made, to help celebrate his life. I'm jealous not to own such a collection. I cherish the china that was passed down to me - but have wished for more memories of laughter, camping trips and family vacations. My childhood memories are becoming faint. Photographs, some burned along the edges, barely surviving a fire.

My husbands love of history is directly inherited from his parents. I would never have collected from my Poppa, very specific recollections of his time in the Canadian Navy. It took my Grama's breath away to hear new stories after 52 years of marriage. My husband talked extensively with Poppa before he passed. For a brief time, we shared a grandfather.



I've connected with wonderful, warm, honest, caring people over the past few years.Some I've met through work and play. Others - strangers from the internet, where we share common interest. Thank you for your friendship and kindness - You are what keeps me warm at night... Lasting longer than any wood burning stove on these crisp October nights.