Two weeks have passed since my grandmother left this Earth, which is typically my time frame for cataloguing the bigger lesson in sad things.
Something that struck me about all the chatter from the nurse’s stand to Facebook was this love story everyone perceived between my grandpa and her.
This is a funny thing, in my opinion, because on a daily basis over 63 years it wasn’t necessarily obvious.
I guess I can’t speak to all those years, but for 36 from the granddaughter’s seat the romance wasn’t the star. That was a power unrevealed by it’s true, beautiful colors until the end, honestly.
It was poignant to observe my stoic, very private grandfather – the one so many of us identify as their “hero” – falling to his emotions by the finality of her burial services. His unwavering care for her through failing health, paired with the implications of that emotional goodbye told us everything we needed to know. We filled in the rest with thoughtful speeches and Facebook posts and it brought us comfort.
I’ve been reflecting on what I know about this “love story” since flipping through all her photo albums on January 21st. What I saw in those weekends spent with them as a child, how they coped with me getting sick in the backseat of the Town Car in the West Virginia hills, and living with them in my formative twenties.
I’ve seen my grandmother bring him down a notch and watched him put her in her place a time or two.
The eye rolls at the dinner table and walk-offs in public venues.
I’ve heard stories that pre-date my life and watched him charismatically choose his battles (a skill only decades of marriage can perfect.)
They weren’t scene-makers by any stretch, but their love had its bumps and bruises like everybody else. She’d tell you when he was about to get his ass kicked and forget it all by bedtime.
Yes, he always snuck something sparkly under the Christmas tree for her to find when the paper storm cleared.
Sure, he flirted with her in the kitchen, which we all assumed was a motive to kill our appetites.
But for all the 24-hour increments observed through birthday BBQ’s and basketball games, they weren’t the soap opera you watched in envy. You didn’t smack your mate at the end of dinner and say “I wish you were more like Frank.”
No. Between the lines of a teenaged marriage, three good-looking sons, an all-American life in the same single-family home and a successful career in Labor; they lived a life as hard as the one you and I are navigating on a daily basis.
Harder, actually.
In the valleys of that love story is a guy of barely twenty riding the bus to an interview while his young wife gives birth to their first child back at the hospital.
Mom going back to work instead of Dad in that post-partum period while he continued to look for a job.
Dinners they sacrificed for themselves so their kids could eat.
Later in life, he would secure a lucrative career that would have him a couple states away from his wife five days a week.
He’d make that hero’s effort at family man on the weekends and call home every night, but they spent a lot of time physically apart.
This was not a story of inseparable codependent mates who never left each other’s side all their life. Their secret sauce wasn’t in making one another the center of their universe. On many days it was about sacrifice and survival. It was in the very unromantic act of just not giving up.
The marriage was built daily by this. The full impact of what they were doing wasn’t made obvious until year 56 – when he retired and brought home the time and financial safety net required to care for her until the end.
Indeed, he spent his retirement navigating everyday personal care for his aging bride as her mind slipped away, just the way he promised he’d do at the ripe age of 17.
There is truly nothing special about this story that screams louder to me than commitment.
There’s nothing my grandparents did that every spouse in the world could not accomplish just by staying the hell in it.
Not the romance or the world travel. It wasn’t the rags to riches, poetic words exchanged or grandiose displays of undying passion that held them together this long. It was the grit above all else.
It was two decisive, stubborn ass people unwilling to give up for anything. Deciding at the end of each hard day that this life and partnership was worth going again tomorrow.
So how the heck do you remember that when the going gets tough?
When you’re fighting mad and all you really want to do is walk away and stick it to that jerk for failing to take you serious?
What if life is just dragging you through it and you can’t stop wondering if this thing you’ve chosen is the “right” thing?
It’s hard, and it’s supposed to be.
I can’t save your failing marriage with a single blog post, but I can tell you four intentional mindsets I’ve adopted over the course of mine that validated themselves as I watched my grandpa hold his word to the very last day. I believe it was by these personal choices that death was indeed the only thing that would part them in the end.
*Please note this “tough love” is intended for relationships free of violence and safety issues. If yours is a special case, act accordingly. I only ask that you be honest with yourself as you read on.
1) Decide that you are not a victim. No one duped you into marrying this person. You put on the dress and showed up for those vows and it is among your responsibilities to participate in it. You are the maker of these promises. You decide how you will perceive the things that happen within your relationship. You have the choice to agree or disagree with your partner, he has the choice to like it or leave it and so goes life. Speak up, ask for help and assert your needs. Embrace bad days that are a means to the greater happy ending.
Marriage is a grown up choice, so unless you’ve been kidnapped and held against your will – and please call the police if that is the case – you are no victim. The day you stop acting like one is the day you accept the magnitude of what you are creating with this person.
2) Take responsibility for yourself. It isn’t your partner’s job to bring your mood up at the end of a hard day. He/she had a day too, and likewise, it is not your job to “fix” whatever bullshit they were thrown.
If you need to pull off in a parking lot on the way to your kid’s day care and meditate for a few minutes before switching gears? By all means, sister, take care of yourself. Encourage your mate to do the same. Especially if you have kids, the two of you have a lot of giving left in this day and that is impossible to do well from a place of internal disaster.
Be a good friend and communicate with your roomie about the ups and downs of your life. But also: Work out. Eat well. Find time alone. Read, have a treat, meet up with friends.
Your emotional health is not their responsibility. You need to individually love yourselves well before you can be proper givers in a two-way marriage.
3) Respect the ways your partner is different than you. I am the queen of peace, harmony and mutual respect – my husband is a loyalist. He doesn’t mind disrupting the room to drive his point home. He doesn’t seek approval like I do, but he does expect the love of the people he’s chosen against all odds and his hurt shows up in different ways than mine.
This has been a struggle for me for 14 years, especially when I have loyalty to the room he’s offending. I’ve had to learn long-term to choose understanding the best that I can. Why? Because we’re in this deep now. We have vows and mutual property and babies, and with that comes responsibility. Like my grandmother, I may threaten his life in the heat of the moment, but damned if I haven’t learned to go to bed with necessary acceptance on most nights. My common question, “is he doing this to be a malicious?” is usually met with a very realistic, “not at all.”
Likewise, if you are a loyalist married to a person of universal acceptance, try not to view their understanding of both sides as a crack in your foundation. Sometimes we speak different languages as a couple, but when push comes to shove? I do choose him above all else.
So it goes on, for better or for worse – as the vows went – in sickness and in health for as long as you both shall live. Remember what you promised and try in those moments you just want to change them to ask yourself – can I change my perception of this dispute instead?
4) Stand up for one another. This is a true struggle for a girl who values harmony and observes her mate as a disruptor, but my love has always grown stronger in those moments I’ve chosen to be his advocate.
It is easy to side with someone speaking directly into your own criticisms of the person you love, but it sets necessary boundaries to stand up for them instead.
Some of my grandfather’s fondest memories of my grandmother ended up being the times she embarrassed him in front of officers higher up than him at work. The times she stood up for what she believed in, even when it wasn’t the popular opinion.
When it’s all said and done, the story of your love will be told just like this. You’ll smile back on these moments that nearly kill you with embarrassment and say “That was my husband, such a character. God rest his soul.”
Remember these things the next time you want to take the low road and sneak out the back door. My grandparents nor Jay-Z needed advance degrees to understand the simplest of all success secrets: The most genius thing you will ever do is never give up. +