Okay, so it wasn't ALL daisies and butterflies

I went to my first support group on Thursday morning. I thought it was a pretty good meeting. I was nervous that it would be me and everyone in the tri-state area that was 80+ years old, but actually it was me, and an ages spanning from me to 80, so I wasn't too much of a sore thumb. Although at the end the chaplain that facilitated the meeting came over and asked me if I'd like to speak with someone my own age. I replied in the affirmative. She said that she'd had someone call that morning that was hesitant to attend the meeting because she feared that she wouldn't find anyone near her age. I know the feeling. So I gave the chaplain my name and number, and the blog address. We'll see if the other young widow calls me.

Any way, at the meeting we watched a video that confirmed that some of my feelings are normal. First of all, she said that it's perfectly normal not to be crying buckets. (Whew!) Although I have been crying, I'm still not the sobbing mess I thought I'd be. It still catches me at the strangest times. The woman on the video (who lost her husband at around 40 years old to a sudden heart attack - left her with 5 kids and no job!) said that she'd pace around the living room at night and angrily tell her husband "Well it's great that you're up there with your halo on, but hello! I'm down here with no job and five kids."

The woman in the video also said that we tend to make our spouse sound as though they were saint material. We play them up in our minds and in our heart as if they never did anything wrong. That our marriages were like gold. When she mentioned it in the video, I laughed out loud. I do that. I make Jim sound like he was a saint. I make it sound like we had 12 years of wedded bliss during which we never had a single fight. So here we go:

My number one advice to the under 25 set: don't get married until you're at least 25. And then when you get to 25, think about it for another couple of years. Jim and I got married when he was 25 and I was 22. We were babies! And getting married young makes it tough to figure yourself out. I had never lived with a man apart from my dad and brothers. Lemme tell you, it was the shock of my life. I moved from my home into my college dorm, into an apartment with roommates, back into my parents' home, and into Jim's home. This is the first time in my life I've ever lived alone. And if you think living with Rachel and Jake is living alone, you're nuts. Actually, if you think living in Kohler is living alone, you're nuts. But I digress.

The second year of marriage is the hardest. At least in my mind. The first year you're all in-love-and-setting-up-house-and-cutesy. The second year you're up to your elbows in laundry and cleaning the bathtub and you start to wonder if this is what you signed up for. I was so immature when we got married that I really, really, really made our second year difficult. And Jim was immature too. Before we got married, we had talks like "I definitely want kids." What the dialogue should have been was:
Me: I want kids.
Jim: Me too.

Me: How many do you want?
Jim: I don't know - two? How many do you want?
Me: I don't know. Two or three.

{Insert what we didn't talk about here:}
Him: When do you want to have kids?
Me: I don't know - a long time from now.
Him: Like, a year?
Me: No, like eight years.
Him: Eight years?! I was thinking of trying for kids in three months.
Me: {Squawk!} Three months? Are you nuts?

Perhaps these are things we should have talked about before we got married. But you know, at 22, you just ass.u.me you're on the same page. Foolish, I know.

One time during our second year of marriage we got in a colossal fight and I screamed at him to get out. He started to leave and I started screaming at him to stay. Another time we got into a fight, and I have no idea why, but we were yelling at each other in the bathroom as he was taking a shower. For whatever hair brained reason, I picked up his towel and threw it into the shower while he was in there. I don't know that I've ever seen Jim that mad. When I think about it now, I laugh. Why would I throw his towel into the shower?

Jim's feet were ridiculously ugly. He had Fred Flintstone feet. I used to call him Bilbo Baggins. Which he only sort of got because he hated Lord of the Rings - shame on him. He also hated Star Wars, much my brothers' intense chagrin. They sat Jim down to watch it one winter afternoon and he fell asleep. They were horrified.

Jim chewed his nails. He said he did it to keep them neat, but I thought it was a yucky habit.

I crack a lot of my bones in my neck and fingers. It made Jim want to climb the walls. He also got annoyed with my incessant worrying, moodiness, hashing over a single subject for hours on end, and the fact that I really care about what people think about me.

Jim would do anything to get something for free. One night he and his friend Keith must have drank around 5 pitchers of New Castle to get one of everything the visiting New Castle rep had at a bar we frequented in Atlanta. It was funny to a point. Sometimes it was just cheap. He loved junky little tchotchkes.

Jim thought I was a slob. I am a slob. I carefully drape things over chairs until I have a pile so high and everything in the pile is wrinkly. I've been doing that since - forever. Jim was neat. He would carefully hang his shirts and pants or put them in the laundry basket. Even with a laundry chute, I can still get pretty slobby.

I eventually gave up talking to Jim while he was on the Musky Marauder fishing trips. He was so rude on the phone - eating, talking to other people in the room, drinking - I finally gave in and gave up. I think he was delighted to have a week without me jabbering his ear off. It was probably the best week of his year.

Jim pretty much carried me and our marriage through the time that we lived in Charlotte. I was a mental wreckage zone. I just couldn't pull it together. If it weren't for Jim, I don't know that I could have survived it, and I'm absolutely certain that our marriage wouldn't have. Even over the last year, he would apologize for being sick or too weak to do something and I would just laugh and say "Honey, remember Charlotte? I owe you BIG. You can go through another 10 years of cancer and it won't make up for what you did for me in Charlotte." Even after Charlotte I imagine that once in a while he got sick of being the really responsible one. I always wondered why he didn't pick someone more like him. More responsible. I guess he had his reasons. After all, two really responsible people does not necessarily equal the best time.

Admittedly, we got over Charlotte and although we did have some spats, we really had a good time together. Once we moved to Atlanta it was the place, the time, the people, the marriage we were looking for. We'd both matured. We both had great jobs. We had two great houses, great friends, and we had a heck of a lot of fun together. We went on trips, we spent a lot of nights out, we spent good time with friends, and we spent a lot of time going on dates. And we brought that here to Wisconsin. And we had the kids at the right time for us. On our time schedule, (once Jim accepted that kids weren't going to happen in the first 6 months of marriage!) and they are great kids because we did it our way. They would be different kids and we would be different people if we'd had kids earlier.

Not every day was daisies and butterflies, but is it for anyone? Don't we all have annoying little habits? I know I do. I know Jim did. And Jim was perfect. So if he had a few little annoying things, imagine how annoying the rest of us are.