Se Three and a Half Men: Messages, Meaning and Memories
Marriage (Mine)
I was married for 39 years (I round up to 40 years for ease). The last 8 years of that marriage were marred by the onslaught of Alzheimer’s disease, robbing my now deceased husband of being his best self. People repeatedly ask me to share when he died (or when I became widowed). I answer as follows: it depends how you measure; physical death or when he ceased to be the man I married?
Recently, I was editing and reviewing and discarding the thousands of photos on my IPhone.
Why?
At one level, I was on a search for photographs I had taken in years gone by, but had not yet recognized as “my art.” My photographic art awareness has arrived late in my life; I did not see photography as one of my medium. Until the past month or two or three, my photographic images were rarely taken with intentionality.
There’s a lengthy story for another time explaining my reluctance to think about, use, and share my photographs. Hint: think of hundreds of photos of me as child being shot over one month period each year. Photo lens close ups!
And yes, in my just completed search, I found “art,” some dating back to 2017. The picture below is titled: Triple Reflexes.
Note: As of today, I have not done a pre-iPhone searches through physical photo albums which I have in my possession, one created per year for the first 21 years of our marriage as we raised a family. Each year, over the December holidays, I gave my now late husband a beautiful empty leather photo album. They were identical except for the color of the leather. I then literally “took back” the album.
And each Father’s Day, that album was returned to my late husband full of the memories of the prior year. Quite a tradition. Quite a collection of albums. Quite the trove of treasures. Quite the way to create continuity. I haven’t perused them since 2016.
That photo search was real. But as I searched, I found some other non-art things that turn out to have value too. Things I wasn’t looking for….search and ye shall find as the saying goes.
Seek and Ye Shall Find…
In perusing my last 8 years, I got a close up view into my relational life post-marriage. I saw first hand how I have continued to grow and live life fully, even after my spouse’s death. I recommend the journey backwards in time (through photos in my case) to my readers. Looking back enables all of us to see the now and the future more clearly. Read that again. In sum, our relational history is our key to developing meaningful, impactful and valuable future relationships with another.
Actually and for the record, that sentence applies to history’s value more generally. That’s why the adage about history repeating itself has such durability.
My Life Since….
As I reviewed the years past and moving forward, I had an opportunity to reflect on three relationships I had with three distinct men.
Now, and this matters, I am only counting relationships longer than one year. Not counting one or two night “dates” or one or two month efforts. (Hey M2, in case you read this, I regret to inform you that you don’t count! Readers: He was the plagiarist I have written about who proclaimed himself an ethics expert — I kid you not. He stole language and said it wasn’t bad since it was taken for an opinion piece not scholarship. Actually, that’s worse in some ways as it steals personal views of another.)
Of my relationships: One was three plus years (M); one was 16 months (R); and one was 15 months (J). They were sequential and non-overlapping. I ended all three relationships. I’m not saying those endings were easy; they were not. I’ll return to the 1/2 man reference in the title momentarily.
If you add those three relationships together, I have been in meaningful interpersonal connections for more than 6 of the last 8 years, with the gaps representing and reflecting time between the men. And my desire for a relationship is not because I need one; it is because I want one. I can be alone. Yes. But my preferred stature is being partnered. I don’t mean 24/7 glue relationships. I mean life affirming and life enhancing opportunities to share in my next chapter with another.
As just noted, reflecting back to see forward has been beneficial. With my photo scroll through time, I could articulate to myself (and now to readers) the impact of these three men on my life in the past and in the now and moving into the future. And the impacts were different in many ways and one individual had, in retrospect, so little impact that I am startled still. Yup.
And, here’s an insight: I feel privileged in that two of these three men have graced my spaces in ways that endure to this day and likely forever. Ponder that. Relationships at an older age post-marriage that count … and in our later years, one year is more like 5 years since the forward window is so much smaller than the windows of the past. One doesn’t need a decade lasting relationship among “seniors” to be enduring. In our youth, a relationship of a year or two or even three can wash away under time’s bridge. Barely noteworthy in many instances. But as we age chronologically, the measuring stick for stickiness alters. Say 1=5.
Time Measurements
When one is 30 or 35 or 40 or 45, there are decades ahead. No lateness anxiety (unless pregnancy is an issue). But when one is 60 or 70 ish, time gets measured differently. The decades ahead pale when compared to the number of decades gone by. Think of it like dog years: 1=7. We measure pet’s ages against a different time continuum.
So relationships of 15 months among older folks is more like a relationship of perhaps five years in early life, given time’s shortening. I need a mathematician (J, are you there?)
M and R and J… in that order….
M was a partner every woman should wish for in her life. He loved every inch of me (and I loved every inch of him) and made me feel like the most beautiful woman to walk on this planet. Wow!
We traveled; we skied; we camped, we canoed; we ate in and out (he cooked); we enjoyed water and mountains. He made real music, playing guitar and piano and clarinet. He sang and we went to concerts galore. We discussed work; we co-authored an article of two; we co-presented once or twice. We parented a dog. And we relished a freedom that comes with age and stage when there are no kids under tow and careers have peaked (not ended).
Seriously folks, everyone needs an M in their lives once. True, he had many psychological issues (one could say he was married to his mother) and at the end of the day, he couldn’t grow up. As I reflected on the many many photos from our three years together, I could still feel the warmth, the strong magnetic physical attraction, the joy. I have plentiful wonderful memories.
Now, R was a lovely, decent, kind man but there was a crippling issue in our relationship: although he was widowed like I was, he was still married to his dead wife in every sense. She went everywhere with us (in bed too) and even when we did wonderful things, R’s guilt was overwhelming and debilitating. The more fun we had, the worse he felt. He had never truly grieved and let’s just say processing grief means owning relational good and the bad. Yes, there are periods of “bad” in us all. Comes with the concept of marriage. R had no bad memories of his (dead) wife. Are you kidding me? Seems he was unwilling to recognize them; at a distance, I could even see them!
The depth of the limitations of my relationship with R was manifest when I perused the many photos of our journey: there was no longing now, no lingering or any physical attraction, no sense of months well lived, no nothing (save one photo of slow dancing at the wedding of one of his closest friend’s daughter). He hadn’t etched into my psyche or my heart. Sad but true. Maybe it was because he was never actually free with (or to be with) me.
Interestingly, I can wear and use his plentiful gifts. They aren’t accompanied by memories. They are emotionless. Compare that to gifts from my late husband; they are weighted still. I can barely use them — yet.
And now J is a man who, to this very day, is the smartest person I have ever known and likely will ever know. Exceptional. Truly. A one-of-kind brainiac. And not pompous either. Not self-centered. Ego in check. Always asking and learning. Listening well too. Offering advice when needed with insight and perspective and understanding. His contributions to my last book appear in the acknowledgments. He was/is a mathematician, a physician and an inventor of medical devices (holding patents).
And I still am attracted to him and as I perused the many photos of our time together, the magnetic pull is there. Magnetic. I suspect that attraction will always be there. Enduringly attractive. And that’s ok; the pleasure memories are vast.
Now, yes, we enjoyed exceptional wine and gastronomic journeys. We spent time at my home with my dog Wrinkles with wine/food (cheese for the three of us) and had a stellar baking adventure of long duration (it involved developing a real cake with roses to match a children’s story I wrote about J — still unpublished but that might change).
We visited wonderful spots across MA, NH and ME. We played pickleball (he used to play tennis) but I stood a chance in singles pickleball. We were quite the pair.
We spoke on the phone for hours. I mean hours. Processing our day and the like. At one point, I think we had talked for 200 nights in a row (apart from nights we spent together — which were vastly too few for my taste). Imagine the phone connection.
But, if M was married to his mother and R was married to his deceased wife, J was (and I suspect still is) married to his work. And work won. Hands down… not even close. A lingering sad truth. He knew it too. He saw us taking a pause for a couple of years while he wound down his business. Maybe in one’s youth but now? Come on…. For the record, it is a year (almost to the day) since we were partnered…
Now … the 1/2
There is a fourth man whom I have known for a dozen years. We worked on a lengthy complex difficult interagency government project together. He knew my late husband; they got along famously (due to a parallel set of early and difficult life experiences). Truly.
Over the years we have shared our work and personal journeys. We both do work now that focuses on social services. Independently, we each travel and give speeches across our globe. We both engage in creative projects, including writing. Add in: I do other tangible art; he does documentaries. We both adore sports: football, basketball. We both want our respective biological offspring to find success and happiness. We talk together in person or via text or email about our worlds and our woes. We are friends and always will be.
Once when I was widowed and unattached to a male partner (in those gap periods described above), I texted him and said that I needed his help in finding a new male partner. “Would he be my matchmaker?,” I asked. “What do you want in someone?,” he asked. I replied: “Your replica.” His answer: “There’s only one of me. Mold now broken.”
As we move forward, I can’t help but notice that for the first time in more than a decade of friendship, we will soon both be single and unattached. Key word is “soon.” Another key word is “both.” That doesn’t mean we should be together as romantic partners; it means we are both soon to be unattached.
Despite our respective ages (the addition of the two is quite the sum but who is counting), we are both working. We are both healthy. We are both keenly aware of time. Both our kids are or are becoming independent. We both want more in our future, a glorious next chapter filled to and overflowing the brim with life and intimacy and curiosity and depth and kindness. No time for snark. No time for meanness. No time for complaining. No time to waste. No time to wait.
He’s my 1/2. He’s most assuredly not a 1/2 man. By 1/2, I mean we are there for each other in some ways but not others; we aren’t each others other. That’s not a bad thing; that’s a truth statement. Thus the 1/2.
And, and this is key, I don’t have any old photographs of any shared adventures or experiences to share about or with my friend, at least not ones I can find on my iPhone. Perhaps best stated: not yet. But their absence speaks too. Yes: there surely are some photos on official websites or institutional photo collections or big family celebrations… I remember one from MLK event at the US Department of Education.
Might be time to take his picture when next we are together. It is in those photos of the past and present that we develop our tomorrows.
