I got so caught up trying to be tough and get through 46 years that I didn't realize that I had erased the Proposal. I had placed it where the Sun didn't shine.
I would talk about being left at the Alter, I bought my own wedding ring with Road Runners on it to prove that I could run too, I told the stories over and over of being acknowledged as his Wife at the Wake. Those closest to him from the early days still remembered "us" and recognized the original plan of "us" being husband and wife. I'm very grateful for that. Like me, they never really accepted that that didn't happen. I knew and lived the story and that seemed good enough. Raymond admitted woefully during every drunken beat down of my door that he ran from the Ceremony for our life. He apologized for doing it to us more times than I can possibly remember however he wasn't beating on my door sober in the daylight and by the time he was sober and we had returned from out of State he had had a major heart attack and had married the distraction for the sake of. I know that he truly regretted not showing up for the Ceremony til the day he died but in the early years he was still on the run and still on the bottle from the ghosts of Nam. To survive, I lived a life trying to replace him and doing many things to spite him. To do that required that I totally black out the asking itself ... until a few months ago.
The memory hit me like a freight train after being buried in a ton of bricks.
Beautiful sweet heartfelt loving secret talk leading to a humble asking if I would be his Wife made and accepted on the River Bottoms. Our love had already been sealed, the forging was complete, we made preliminary plans for the Ceremony and the beginning of our life together .. and then... I could never have imagined what followed a few short months later.
The memories' beauty and the peaceful sense of right and life that accompanied the proposal actually blew up within seconds of raising it's head, as explosive as a hand grenade and as deadly as a Bouncing Betty. I couldn't hold the whole memory for several days. I had to sort of put my toes in the water and work my way up from the peacefulness of our nest in the Bottoms, the sound of the water, the wind and the birds and then a few words at a time. I have to stop myself before I go down our rabbit hole completely without benefit of recent insights or reconciliations.
I would talk about being left at the Alter, I bought my own wedding ring with Road Runners on it to prove that I could run too, I told the stories over and over of being acknowledged as his Wife at the Wake. Those closest to him from the early days still remembered "us" and recognized the original plan of "us" being husband and wife. I'm very grateful for that. Like me, they never really accepted that that didn't happen. I knew and lived the story and that seemed good enough. Raymond admitted woefully during every drunken beat down of my door that he ran from the Ceremony for our life. He apologized for doing it to us more times than I can possibly remember however he wasn't beating on my door sober in the daylight and by the time he was sober and we had returned from out of State he had had a major heart attack and had married the distraction for the sake of. I know that he truly regretted not showing up for the Ceremony til the day he died but in the early years he was still on the run and still on the bottle from the ghosts of Nam. To survive, I lived a life trying to replace him and doing many things to spite him. To do that required that I totally black out the asking itself ... until a few months ago.
The memory hit me like a freight train after being buried in a ton of bricks.
Beautiful sweet heartfelt loving secret talk leading to a humble asking if I would be his Wife made and accepted on the River Bottoms. Our love had already been sealed, the forging was complete, we made preliminary plans for the Ceremony and the beginning of our life together .. and then... I could never have imagined what followed a few short months later.
The memories' beauty and the peaceful sense of right and life that accompanied the proposal actually blew up within seconds of raising it's head, as explosive as a hand grenade and as deadly as a Bouncing Betty. I couldn't hold the whole memory for several days. I had to sort of put my toes in the water and work my way up from the peacefulness of our nest in the Bottoms, the sound of the water, the wind and the birds and then a few words at a time. I have to stop myself before I go down our rabbit hole completely without benefit of recent insights or reconciliations.
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