Marry Me

I have toyed with not publishing this post.  After a few rereads, I think it’s important to share it. I am not being true to myself or to the intent of this blog if I don’t.  There are admissions in here that embarrass me, and that I still might make excuses for. So be it. 

I remember when the Doctors called us to the hospital to tell my brother and I what my parents already knew: My Mom had Cancer.  My parents seemed optimistic, but I knew my Mother. And I knew her eyes. And I knew that they were lying to us that “everything would be fine”. My parents protected my brother and I as much as they could, not wanting us to hurt. In the end, the outcome was as predicted, and we lost the most amazing woman who ever walked the earth. And the hurt was insurmountable.

This was in November 2004. At that time, I had been dating someone for about 2 months. My Mother’s diagnosis this early in our relationship had me on the fence. I came home from the hospital late at night, and called him. I said: “This isn’t the flu. She is going to die. I won’t ask you to be my boyfriend because I understand if this is too much to handle. I won’t feel bad if you can’t do this.” I made it very clear to him that I would not be 100% in the relationship, and his response was: “I can handle it.” 

Trauma makes you a stranger to yourself, let alone to the person you share a life with. He stood by me through the sad moments, and the hard times. I barely noticed the crappy things or warning signs that things weren’t quite right, because I was just happy to have someone to hold me at the end of the day and tell me things would be okay. 

The first year of a relationship is considered the “honeymoon” phase. You have fun, you laugh, and you have lots of sex. Our relationship was the opposite of that. We bickered, we cried, we had zero intimacy…everything was about my Mother, my sadness, and my fears. I could not turn off that part of my life. Cancer was ringing in my ears and it wouldn't stop. When we actually did have intimacy, I cried. I cried out of horrible guilt because it didn’t make sense to me that I was having sex while my Mother was taking Morphine pills to block out her pain.

The lines of impending loss and a strained relationship were constantly blurred, and I could never tell what the root of the problem was. Sometimes I thought I was the problem, because I wasn’t being a good girlfriend. I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. And when I cried that I was sorry I was so horrible to him, he said “That’s okay”, as though he, too, thought I was the single reason things were rough.

Yet we stayed together. I was terrified to be alone, and I think it’s safe to say he was terrified to leave and look like the asshole who left his girlfriend when her Mother was sick. We were both confused and unbelievably overwhelmed. 

When my Mother went into the hospital for that final time, she was admitted to the emergency room with massive hemorrhaging. My brother and I cried in the hallway, terrified she was going to die at any moment. I could hear her crying in pain as she passed blood clots, and they wouldn’t let us see her. He held me close, and rubbed my brother’s back, soothing us. When were finally able to go to her, we all huddled behind the privacy curtain in the emergency room, where she lay with her eyes closed, tears dried on her face. 

As though it was yesterday, I remember him reaching for her hand and holding it. And in front of my brother and father, he asked for my hand in marriage. Through her pain and discomfort, she opened one big brown eye and looked right at him. With an even stare and raspy voice she said: “If you marry her, you can’t give her back. We don’t accept returns.” 

Yes. That’s what she said. 

My Mom had a love for musicals and show-tunes, and on her bad days in the hospital he would burst into her room and sing “Oklahoma” at the top of his lungs. He made her laugh and smile, and I will always love him for that. He took her for her x-rays and radiation, singing to her and talking to her in funny voices as he wheeled her bed down the cold hallway. He went and got us food because we hadn’t eaten. He walked our dog, driving to and from the hospital many times a day. He was a good man. And he wanted to marry me.

I lay on her hospital bed with her, looking at Wedding Magazines. We giggled and gossiped as we looked at the pictures of flowers, and dresses, and cakes. The truth, however, was that every new glossy page we turned was a reminder, a slap in the face, that I would get married without my Mom. After we put down one of the magazines, she touched my face and said: “My beautiful girl. You are going to be a beautiful bride. You are wonderful, and creative. It will all be perfect, you’ll see.” I can still feel her hand on my cheek.

A few months after she died, he proposed marriage. While he was in school full-time doing his MBA, I planned the perfect wedding. Planning gave me something to live for. I was determined and invigorated by what I thought was the light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. Any nagging feelings I had I brushed aside, because in my mind this was my path. I was going to be a wife. I had a purpose. Sadly, planning a wedding so soon after my Mother died was as good as giving a kid crayons and paper to distract them during a massive raging hurricane. It was a temporary solution to a much bigger problem.

We never should have gotten married, but we were both afraid to be honest with each other. We didn’t want to hurt each other so instead of saying “I can’t” we said “I do.”

The wedding was beautiful. We began our life together. And both of us knew in our hearts that something huge was missing. The trauma of loss had changed us both so fundamentally, we had become strangers to each other.  I won’t go into the details of the demise of our marriage. I will just say that less than a year later, our relationship ended.  We divorced soon after.

Last year, in a moment of nostalgia, I thought about my past and my ex-husband. He made me laugh when I was sad, and he loved my Mother very much.  He was good to my family. And no matter the pain and hurt we both went through, I will always choose to remember the good. And how for a brief time, he made us laugh during the worst time in our lives.