My Story

[Sunflyer]

W's surgery is today. Going to be a long procedure. Hoping for smooth sailing.

Graduation party for son yesterday was great. All seemed to have a good time. W treated my visiting sister and BIL well, but she did speak with my sister alone for a while. I hope she respected my wishes not to talk about our problems with her.

Last she updated me, she said that only her parents and brother knew. That is apparently out the window now, since I usually get at least a couple of anniversary messages from her other family members, and yesterday I got none. So presumably this has now spread to her entire family. And they will probably all be cheerleading for her to stick to her guns.

Marriages in my family are notoriously troubled. My parents didn't get along for most of theirs but stuck together anyway. Both were critically ill and hospitalized at the same time in April 2005, and I thought I was going to lose them both then. My mother pulled through, but my father did not. My older sister said that she told my father before he passed that my mom wasn't doing well, and he wept, after years of hardly speaking to her except to fight. My mother was so ill when my dad passed that we couldn't tell her until perhaps two months later. She also took it hard. "You have your differences, but..."

My older sister wasn't married too long when her husband divorced her for one of her coworkers, who was also her friend.

My sister who visited this weekend started her marriage with a hotheaded, very jealous husband who had a temper and who physically hit her due to imagined infidelities. (Think Robert De Niro in Raging Bull, if you've seen that movie). I wouldn't have blamed her for leaving him, and for a while I hoped she would. They worked everything out and have now been married for 32 years, with three grandchildren. BIL was, in fact, the life of the party yesterday.

Of all her children's spouses, I think my mom loved my W the best, and would have put money on us going the distance. If she were here, she might be surprised by which one endured, given the obstacles each faced.