Eight years

BEST FRIEND I EVER HAD! (Long-ago photo by BobbaLew.)

—Today’s the day.
Eight years ago, April 17th, 2012, my beloved wife died.
We lasted 44&1/2 years. Her mother, who was a real pill, predicted we wouldn’t last four months.
We lasted that long despite how royally messed-up I was.
I used to say my wife was the sane one, and I was half insane.
We both had dreadful childhoods, mine perhaps worse than hers.
Her mother raised her to be a frump.
My hyper-religious parents convinced me I was rebellious and stupid because I couldn’t worship my holier-than-thou father.
Although as I got older, my mother realized my father was losing me. When I finally left for good, my mother was distraught.
And I didn’t return “the Prodigal-Son,” making my father angrier still.
My wife died of cancer. It kills its host, and thereby kills itself.
We wrastled with cancer over a year. Up-and-down. Back-and-forth.
I thought it lymphoma, but actually it was breast-cancer. But no primary-site. We didn’t know she had it until it metastasized into her lymph-nodes.
Chemo would take it to nothing, but it always returned. Finally it got aggressive.
April 16th I took her to hospice, and contrary to what I expected, no one escapes hospice alive.
We went in our 2005 Toyota Sienna minivan, and my wife told me she appreciated our making the long trip in a comfortable car.
To her our 2003 Honda CR-V was uncomfortable.
I told her “Don’t forget. You always had what mattered, what’s between the ears.”
I could talk to her: big-words, obscure concepts, figures-of-speech; she got ‘em all. Often she told me she was thinking the same thing.
And a few years ago I told her older brother — still alive — “I think I convinced her she wasn’t a frump.”
And of course, now that she’s gone I begin to reverse my torrid childhood.
Would that she could experience who I am now. I can talk to pretty girls; 10 years ago I couldn’t - scared.
And had she not died, I’d probably still be the screwed-up mess I was before.
She was hospitalized once, and when she was discharged I promised myself to be more normal. Didn’t work! As soon as we got back home we fell into the same tortured roles.
I had to lose her to break loose.
A lot has changed since my wife died.
“NO PRETTY LADY WILL TALK TO/SMILE AT/BE INTERESTED IN YOU!” That was my neighbor Sunday-School Superintendent with whom my parents heartily agreed.
I’ve since discovered that was BUNK, a wonderful thing to tell a five-year-old Aquarian.
I’ve befriended too many pretty ladies.
I’m still filled with self-loathing, but that hoary childhood is cast asunder.
Friends wonder how I attracted a wife in the first place. I guess she liked me from the get-go = the way I thought. My habit of skewering conventional wisdom, and noting different and interesting points-of-view.
The fact she had a difficult childhood made her think she deserved no better.
I think of one girl I befriended long ago who also liked the way I thought. Girls like that are rare-birds, but after a few days of me she’d walk away.
It’s depressing to think of what my wife gave up to stay with me. She wanted kids, and I didn’t. I was afraid I’d be like my father.
So now eight years have passed. I’ve befriended so many ladies I’m amazed.
“You were very lucky,” my Bereavement-Counselor tells me. “Your wife was perfect for who you were.
She looks down and smiles.”
“No up!” I shout. “My wife was also an unbeliever. She’s roasting in Hell, as will I some day.”
The zealots were all-too-happy to tell us “Hell for you, baby! You are disgusting!”

• My wife and I were in the same class (‘66) at Houghton College (“HO-tin;” as in “hoe,” not “how” or “who”). She was extremely shy, and I didn’t know she was interested in my until our Senior year.
• “The Prodigal-Son,” is a Bible-story. Destitute from squandering his inheritance, he returns to his father’s authority. NO WAY in a million years was I returning.
• “No pretty lady, etc. etc.” was my neighbor Sunday-School Superintendent Hilda Q. Walton, who convinced me all males, including me at age-5, were SCUM. (And I’m sure by now it’s well over 14 blogs.)