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Monday 26 July 2010

On love...


Today is my twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. Mine and GJ's.

It honestly doesn't seem like that long, but we have an eighteen year old man-child to prove most of those years have been time-served...

And I spent much of last week at home, covered in grime and dust, packing memories from childhood into boxes, and sorting through the things I shall keep and others that need to be kept, given, or even thrown, away.

Clearing your parents' home is cathartic.

Painful, but cathartic.

Clearing your own home is sometimes necessary!

I'd put off doing things for a time, many months when I was very fearful of not ever fully recovering from my back injuries, added to with unresolved grief after the loss of my parents...

I guess I'm in reflective mode today.

My husband has stuck with me throughout all of this.

He is strong, and sometimes also quite a vulnerable man...

Together we've experienced so much: Side by side we've been through thick and thin, sudden family loss on both sides, nail-biting crises, debilitating illness, torture, turmoil, debt, unemployment, moving house eight times, separation because of work, long periods of constant worry about our son and school and whether we were doing the right thing, varicose family horrors, and our own personal turbulence -- We're both pretty strong personalities, neither of us gives in easily...

It's not always been easy.

Living together with another person never really is, I think...

You make accommodations for each another. We find excuses; Filter some of the truth; Prop one another up; Make each other cups of tea...

In sickness and in health.

For richer for poorer.

For better, or for worse...

Some of us make it this far. Some of us don't. There's nothing wrong in that.

But this is our 24th year. Celebrated today.

And I'm grateful to him for continuing to hold me together, sometimes he puts me together, piece by piece.

At least I'm grateful to him some of the time... ;)

Quite a lot of the time, I'm thinking about how to go about laying a patio that I can bury him under!

9 comments:

Mrs Jones said...

Wow! Many congratulations! That's an achievement alright. My first marriage lasted 10 years and I'm currently up to 14 on my second (although we nearly didn't make it that far when he couldn't even be bothered to give me a card for our 14th anniversary!) so together that makes it 24 years that I've also been married (just not all to the same person) - does that count?

Lara said...

Congratulations, that's pretty fabulous these days!

I was 13 years married the first time (yes, unlucky for some) to a man with an emotional IQ of 3. Less than 1 year married to Mr GGbut at least hoping to break previous record :o)

Jinksy said...

Patio, eh? Every home should have one! LOL :) Congrats on doing without for 24 years!!!

Dumdad said...

Great post and congrats on 24th anniversary. Which, by the way, is exactly where I'm at in my marriage; so next June we will be celebrating our silver wedding anniversary. It makes us sound so old! Silver anniversaries are for old folk not us! And the we look into the mirror. Sod. Ah well. Rollon the golden one . . .

Gigi said...

Congrats! It is an achievement. But I know what you mean with the patio - after almost 20 over here....some days are better than others. But the fact he's still above the patio and you are still grateful to him (most of the time) says wonderful things about the two of you!

libby said...

belated congratulations....when you have a shared history together and the other person is your partner through life some days are good some not so good, but there is always an invisible cloak of love wrapped around you....

Expat mum said...

Congrats and absolutly loved the patio comment. I've only reached 20 years but I'm eyeing the back garden now!

Saz said...

congrtaulations....l believe i this too...for better for worse...the good and the bad..

luv you lots...

see you sunday...


saz x

Anonymous said...

Many congratulations. JP has no idea how many times he has come close to seeing the underside of a patio, or hedge, or floorboards. XXX

Something I wrote earlier...

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