Anniversaries

Nine-eleven. November 22, December 7. These are all dates that people of my pre-Baby Boomer generation and older remember. These are national anniversaries, all tragedies.

We all know nine-eleven, the day Al-Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center in New York City, the most recent of the terrible anniversaries. Most of us do not recognize it as the date of chosen son Tim’s birthday, however. It isn’t all bad.

November 22, 1963, is the day I lost my innocence, the day I realized that the world is not a nice place. John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas that day. December 7, 1941, is the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, HI, and drew the United States into World War II. That’s before my time, of course.

There are other dates I remember: September 8, 1973, is the day our son Daniel was born. December 2, 1940, is the date of the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction that occurred at the University of Chicago. December 2 is noteworthy date in other ways. It’s my birthday and more important, the date on which we baptized Daniel. The latter two are happy occasions. Perhaps all three are.

January 7, 1993, is the day our son Daniel was killed in a freak accident. It’s a day we always remember, but not a happy one.

And today is an important date. It’s the anniversary of our wedding in 1967.

Forty-one years ago it rained – poured, in fact. We got married in Ann’s parents’ home in New Lenox, IL. The campus minister came up from Charleston and officiated. (He later dumped his wife for his secretary, and then, I hear by the grapevine, dumped her for the new secretary. I don’t know how long the chain was, but he did better by us than by himself.)

We held the reception at Ann’s folks’ home, and Ann’s mother, the eternal Home Ec teacher, prepared the grand buffet herself and asked ladies from her church guild come in to serve. We didn’t see Ann’s parents after the ceremony until they visited us in Ohio (where I had a graduate assistantship at Ohio University) at Thanksgiving. We could never figure out where they disappeared or what they did when they vanished.

Our anniversary is somehow made more significant – and joyous – by the fact that in the general population the divorce rate hovers around 50 per cent. In our demographic, couples whose children have died, the divorce rate rockets to about 85 per cent. That’s an astounding figure and, I think, a testament to Ann’s willingness to make things work and the very good therapists we saw after Daniel’s death over fifteen years ago.

Before he died, we always joked that we couldn’t afford to get divorced, even if we had wanted to. Which we didn’t. After his death, we grieved in such profound and different ways that for a while it didn’t matter if we were married or not. We lived in separate bubbles for a short while. But as we came out of the grief and shock and guilt and anger and all those other conflicting emotions, we realized what love and strength we have together, and continued to build on it.

And no matter what has happened in our lives, the most important fact remains that we continue to love and support each other, that we expect to remain married forever.

We experience occasional joy and occasional sadness, but on the whole we live our lives in great contentment. Early this morning, just after midnight, when I went to bed after the Olympics, I woke Ann to wish her Happy Anniversary. She didn’t curse me for violating the biggest rule of the house: Don’t wake anyone unnecessarily. She didn’t snort and turn over. Instead she giggled and wished me the same. Then we both went right to sleep.

Not to brag, but our marriage works.

As always, I invite you to comment below.