Well, I thought I would do a Youtube video for this post, but I don't film well. Besides, the camera adds 10 pounds and I already have some weight to lose! So here is about what I was trying to say in my flopped video:
I know I have kind of left you all hanging with my, "Into the Hood," blog story. I want to let you know that I am working on the next post. But today, I need to make just a small divergence from the norm.
You see, today is special. So it deserves a special something. Last year, I published my second book, Navigating Marital Abandonment, on this day. Today, though, I don't have a new book to publish. So I am going to do something different and personally talk to you, my readers, for the first time ever and tell you a short story from my life. It took place in 1992, on this very day...
If you had been in a little town called Hartland, Wisconsin, you might have seen a flurry of activity around my mom's church, 19 years ago today, as it was being decorated for Advent. The pastor, Reverend John Bauman, was a family friend. He had married my brother to his wife earlier that year. But he was scheduled to perform a different wedding that day. Not mine. Somebody else's. I don't know who. But I had called John on Thanksgiving evening, the 26th, to ask him for a special favor. There was no rush. I was NOT pregnant. But my fiance and I did, completely by accident, have a marriage license that was expiring that same weekend.
So on Saturday, November 28th, 1992, John skipped the reception dinner for the wedding he was officially performing, to meet my fiance and me at his church, Kettle Morraine United Presbyterian, and officiate our wedding.
It was a small ceremony, if you want to call it that. My honey and I had agreed that we would have a larger ceremony with all the trimmings later. That never really happened. So our wedding consisted of just a couple of readings and the exchange of vows and rings. No pomp. No circumstance. No church full of people. No big party.
Both our sets of our parents, my brother, his wife and baby, my two young siblings, my son and my fiance's cousin were the only ones there. (His sister was invited but couldn't make it.) I wore black jeans and my favorite gray sweater -- which my new husband later ruined in the wash trying to do me a favor. My love wore his bugle boy jeans. (He was a lot slimmer back then. But so was I.) And we got married in front of a Christmas tree.
Then we all ate some chili leftover from the church decorating party earlier in the day, opened our single wedding gift -- a ceramic eagle from my parents that was later broken in an indoor basketball incident, my mom informed my new relatives that I had "problems" they needed to watch out for (thanks, Mom), and that was it -- our original wedding. (I say it that way because we actually exchanged official wedding vows three different times over 14 years. The 15th year, I found him in the back seat of our new car with another woman 2 1/2 weeks before our anniversary. Then HE, not I, filed for divorce.)
Now I celebrate our anniversary alone. My husband won't call me; He won't even email. If I call or email him, he'll either ignore me or tell me to get a life and leave him alone. Well, I have a life. Obviously. It was built around him and our family but now that he is gone, it is a very public, dirt poor, but supremely blessed life. And despite everything that has happened, from his affair to the divorce I didn't even want to all his meanness, my life MISSES having him in it -- not the him he is now. The him he used to be. The man I married.
The one who swore he would never divorce me if I would just give him a chance to be in my life.
The one who said he would die for me.
The one who used to live on principal that this was right and that was wrong, so he would do what was right even if it was less comfortable. He would never have broken a promise if he could help it.
That's the man I miss.
That's not the promise-breaker who left me for another woman, though. That man, I think, he must be some kind of alien intelligence that possessed my husband's body. Where are the Ghostbusters when you need them?
For the past couple of years, I have sent him an anniversary card. But he got upset when I did that. So this year I didn't send one. Maybe next year will be different. We'll have to find out. This year, though, I am feeling a bit bummed. I thought I would share.
Thanks for reading. My next post should be part two of, "Into the Hood.”
~Beth Durkee
I know I have kind of left you all hanging with my, "Into the Hood," blog story. I want to let you know that I am working on the next post. But today, I need to make just a small divergence from the norm.
You see, today is special. So it deserves a special something. Last year, I published my second book, Navigating Marital Abandonment, on this day. Today, though, I don't have a new book to publish. So I am going to do something different and personally talk to you, my readers, for the first time ever and tell you a short story from my life. It took place in 1992, on this very day...
If you had been in a little town called Hartland, Wisconsin, you might have seen a flurry of activity around my mom's church, 19 years ago today, as it was being decorated for Advent. The pastor, Reverend John Bauman, was a family friend. He had married my brother to his wife earlier that year. But he was scheduled to perform a different wedding that day. Not mine. Somebody else's. I don't know who. But I had called John on Thanksgiving evening, the 26th, to ask him for a special favor. There was no rush. I was NOT pregnant. But my fiance and I did, completely by accident, have a marriage license that was expiring that same weekend.
So on Saturday, November 28th, 1992, John skipped the reception dinner for the wedding he was officially performing, to meet my fiance and me at his church, Kettle Morraine United Presbyterian, and officiate our wedding.
It was a small ceremony, if you want to call it that. My honey and I had agreed that we would have a larger ceremony with all the trimmings later. That never really happened. So our wedding consisted of just a couple of readings and the exchange of vows and rings. No pomp. No circumstance. No church full of people. No big party.
Both our sets of our parents, my brother, his wife and baby, my two young siblings, my son and my fiance's cousin were the only ones there. (His sister was invited but couldn't make it.) I wore black jeans and my favorite gray sweater -- which my new husband later ruined in the wash trying to do me a favor. My love wore his bugle boy jeans. (He was a lot slimmer back then. But so was I.) And we got married in front of a Christmas tree.
Then we all ate some chili leftover from the church decorating party earlier in the day, opened our single wedding gift -- a ceramic eagle from my parents that was later broken in an indoor basketball incident, my mom informed my new relatives that I had "problems" they needed to watch out for (thanks, Mom), and that was it -- our original wedding. (I say it that way because we actually exchanged official wedding vows three different times over 14 years. The 15th year, I found him in the back seat of our new car with another woman 2 1/2 weeks before our anniversary. Then HE, not I, filed for divorce.)
Now I celebrate our anniversary alone. My husband won't call me; He won't even email. If I call or email him, he'll either ignore me or tell me to get a life and leave him alone. Well, I have a life. Obviously. It was built around him and our family but now that he is gone, it is a very public, dirt poor, but supremely blessed life. And despite everything that has happened, from his affair to the divorce I didn't even want to all his meanness, my life MISSES having him in it -- not the him he is now. The him he used to be. The man I married.
The one who swore he would never divorce me if I would just give him a chance to be in my life.
The one who said he would die for me.
The one who used to live on principal that this was right and that was wrong, so he would do what was right even if it was less comfortable. He would never have broken a promise if he could help it.
That's the man I miss.
That's not the promise-breaker who left me for another woman, though. That man, I think, he must be some kind of alien intelligence that possessed my husband's body. Where are the Ghostbusters when you need them?
For the past couple of years, I have sent him an anniversary card. But he got upset when I did that. So this year I didn't send one. Maybe next year will be different. We'll have to find out. This year, though, I am feeling a bit bummed. I thought I would share.
Thanks for reading. My next post should be part two of, "Into the Hood.”
~Beth Durkee
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