Personal essays
Her memory remains a blessing
Flashback
My brother-in-law wanted to get married in 1999. Because of the Prince song.
If you ask “which Prince song” or “who’s Prince”, this week’s essay may not be for you.
Kim and I landed in Switzerland the night that Prince died and watched a long memorial that night in German.
It was striking how much we understood given how little we understood.
A lot of my life is like that.
Anyway, my brother-in-law met a woman who also wanted to get married in 1999. Also because of the Prince song.
See what I mean? A lot of life is full of things we understand in the midst of all of the things we don’t understand.
I was my brother-in-law’s best man and had flown back from a class in Colorado a couple of days early to be there for the rehearsal and the wedding.
I suppose we partied like it was 1999 - though I don’t know if that claim would have stood up to scrutiny.
Kim spent much of the night carrying around five month old Elena and my favorite moment was a slow dance with Maggie who was not yet three.
Forever
Kim and I got married thirty years ago today.
So much had changed in the six years between our wedding and Tommy’s.
I’ve told this story before, but in my best man toast I said that when you get married, forever seems like a really, really, long time.
I remember looking up the aisle at our wedding when Kim appeared on her father’s arm.
Just as some of my friends had told me, everything else disappeared except Kim. For a moment or two the room receded and all I saw was her.
Before you say, “awww”, I need to tell you that our first year of marriage was tough.
There were some points where we weren’t sure we were going to make it through.
Forever seemed like way to long.
But our arguments resulted in our hearing each other and making small changes and that was the only year that I remember as being bad.
When people asked about our marriage after ten years I said, we had nine great years and one really tough one.
My answer never changed. Each year we had that many minus one great years and one really tough one.
The toast
Peggy and Eugene were visiting this week. Peggy lived with us for several years while working as a Chinese teacher in the Shaker schools. She married Eugene and they bought a house just down the street from us.
They ended up back in China during COVID and will move back here eventually. This trip was to clear out their half of the two family house they own so that they can rent out both halves.
Their son was born before they moved but their daughter is only nine months old.
There’s something about looking at a child that stretches out your vision of the future.
As the weather shows signs that we’ve taken too long to do what needs to be done, I look at children and realize that they’re going to be alive to bear the worst of the consequences.
At my brother-in-law’s wedding I looked out as I delivered the toast and recalled my wedding and hearing “forever” and thinking how long that is.
But looking at my two daughters I was struck that forever wasn’t going to nearly be long enough.
Spoiler alert - it wasn’t.
Counting
Kim died shortly after our twenty-third anniversary.
We had twenty-two great years and one really tough one.
Peggy said that when Kim’s death hits her and she gets really sad, she thinks to herself that Kim is on a trip somewhere else.
I suppose I have a little of that too. I didn’t stop at twenty-three.
So many of my stories still involve Kim. So many times each day I hear her voice or remember something she did or said.
There’s the Jewish tradition of saying to a mourner, “let her memory be a blessing.”
It’s not the same as having her here, but I was blessed by her presence and I am blessed by her memory.
It means that I keep counting as I celebrate our thirtieth anniversary and tell you that we had twenty-nine great years and one really tough one.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 176. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe