Have you even taken your husband or wife for a scary medical test or for surgery, chemo, or radiation? These are some of the longest days in a marriage, especially if you must sit in a waiting room, alone, wondering what’s happening.
Usually, it’s a relief just to get through the day, but it will be days or weeks before you know what’s really happening and how much danger your life partner faces and how your life could change.
Several of my friends are dealing with this right now. It always takes me back to the days of doing this for my first husband, who was gravely ill or possibly gravely ill on so many occasions.
First, I remember my fears and my sense of helplessness. But then I remember something else, that great feeling of just being there for someone I loved. That “for better or worse” promise suddenly hits home. You grow up a little. You discover your strength. You renew your love. And then you let that strength and love shine through every pore in your body, because you are part of the way through this difficulty for your spouse.
This is marriage. This is love. And it feels good.
Why Be Married? Because Loving Feels Good
W
So true. Funny combination of being frighteningly alone and yet so deeply connected to another.
I think often of how the reward for a long marriage is that eventually one of us will stand by the graveside of the other.
Yes. This this too is love.
Winifred, for me it came three months after our 13th anniversary, 27 years ago. I still go stand by that graveside. Or I crouch to dig in the dirt and plant new flowers. Part of me is buried there, and it seems to have helped the rest of me thrive.
I’m hopeful that someday my spouse will “get through” the anger I still don’t understand, or “find himself” again & come back to the marriage; one thing I hope for is to have someone there for me at times like that.
In 2 months, I’ve had to be cleared of uterine/ovarian/breast/intestinal cancers — alone. whatever he’s got going on, he doesn’t even think to ask how it went anymore. This painful part of my marriage is almost more fear inducing than cancer has been.
But I’m not quitting yet — I believe he still loves me, Assume he still loves me. Pray he gets whatever help he needs to come out the other side and treat me with kindness and fondness again, before one of us is standing at a graveside preferably.
Dealing with cancer is terrifying, for both spouses. I would wish anyone a steady partner by their side through such a tough time, and yet I know that not all spouses are capable of being that steady partner.
I am so sorry you have so much to deal with right now. I hope that you have good friends to help you through it.
I am also sorry for your husband that he missed out on the chance to step up.