As I was reading John Bowe's article in the first of a new series on Salon titled Americans Talk About Love, I couldn't help but think about our own long marriage. Bowe tells the story of Paul Pesce, now 83 with a wife suffering from Alzheimer's and Pesce's adventures through the life of a long marriage. This story is one of the most moving and poignant stories about marriage I have ever read and is worth spending a few moments reading. I predict the message will stay with you for a long, long time. You can go here to read the entire article.
Pesce's story begins by telling about his late night subway ride home in New York. No one else was on the train except a woman. Pesce asked her, "Could I take you to your home?" Her reply: "If you got a quarter you can go anywhere you want?" Pesce got off at the next station and followed her. After another encounter, he asks her if she would like some coffee. Then he asks for a date and they went to a play. So he asks her "Will you marry me?" And she looks at him, pauses, and says "OK."
Thus began a long adventure of married life as Pesce went from being a pharmacist to becoming a physician. Reminiscing about his marriage, Pesce comments:
Out of the 56 years we've been married, I've only been away from her for two weeks. I think it has something to do with my generation. Because I think the natural thing for my generation is to stay with it.
And he concludes:
I'm not sure that the Bible is anything real about heaven. I think that there is something or somebody, something that created us. I think of as a guy who made, like a little miniature railroad track with a town and a train. And he watches what's happening as it runs. If there is such a thing in the afterlife, I hope I can spend it with her.
I asked my wife the other day if she realized that January day in 1950 when I rang the doorbell to her home to take her on a blind date that she would be spending the rest of her life with me--59 years total, three years courting, 56 years of marriage. Of course, that is a silly question, but it is rather mind boggling and reminds me of Pesce's impulsive proposal for marriage after a chance encounter on a subway train. When I rang her doorbell, I was 17, she was all of 16.
Now we mostly enjoy our lives, interspersed with a few doctor's visits, medications, aches and pains. But I don't think either one of us would quite know what to do without the other, despite my own multiple idiosyncrasies and shortcomings. I met my neighbor at the mailbox the other day, a retired pathologist-physician, as I retrieved my income tax forms from the mailbox. I commented that I needed to hurry home and give the envelope to my wife. He said, "You too? I've never figured out how to deal with things like that." I've done that all of our married life. I've given "the envelope," including all of the bills, 90% of the responsibility for running the house, raising the kids, cooking the meals, running our bookstores, running her pre school, being a real estate agent, and a myriad other things. And, unlike me, she never complained. I have to go through "Twenty Questions" to find out how she is feeling. As Pesce said about his own long marriage, "Day to day, it's always been in my mind, how lucky I am." And, of course, I echo those sentiments because I'm not sure how I would have ever survived without her.
