On the Other Hand

Tuesday should have marked our eighth wedding anniversary. It is a date that I share with another widower, though we only know this now because of our widower status. My wife and I celebrated five of them together, and even took a trip for our fifth, though we hadn’t the slightest indication at the time that it would be our last.

The first anniversary without her came five months after she passed away and one week after her first birthday without her, which I will save for another post. Sitting here now, I can scarcely remember what we did during the day, but I am almost certain we went to the beach. I know that I planned something fun to do with my daughter, who was unaware of the date at that time, in order to take my mind off of it. Whatever we did, I remember dreading having to face the date that evening after she was tucked safely into bed.

Once my daughter was asleep that night, I did something that I should not have done then, and have yet to repeat since. I watched our wedding video. From start to finish. Part of me wanted to see her move, to hear her speak, to watch her smile and laugh. And the other part of me wanted to torture myself. I had spent a lot of time trying to run from my grief up to this point, but on this night, I opted instead to wallow in my misery. And wallow I did. For two hours.

Sometime during the video of the wedding itself, I took one of my hardest steps as a widower. I removed my ring from my left hand and placed it instead on my right hand. It was a planned moment, but that did not make it any less difficult.

The summer before my wife died, we attended a wake for a woman who had been her assistant two years prior. She had died within about a year of her lung cancer diagnosis, leaving her husband, and elementary aged son and daughter behind. That fall my wife came home one day and mentioned that the assistant’s husband had come in to eat lunch with their son. She then told me about how several of the ladies had taken notice of the fact that he was “still” wearing his wedding band and pondered as to how long he might continue to do so.

When my own wife died just a few months later, the memory of that conversation resonated with me. Since I also work in a school, I knew that people would be talking about me in the same way, even though I would surely never hear the words spoken. So I decided to change my ring on my own terms. But the idea to wear it on my right hand actually came from a friend and co-worker who had been widowed in her early twenties and has since remarried. I had never paid attention to the fact that she wore a diamond on each hand, but she told me that it was her way of keeping her first husband’s memory alive. I liked the idea, so when it came time for me to do so, I followed suit.

In retrospect, I wish that I had waited longer to move my ring. I knew I wasn’t ready, but it was the one time thus far in my grieving process in which I gave in to my perception of what other people expected of me. I thought I should do it before the new school year started, and I knew that there would be no more poignant day to do so that my first anniversary alone. So with hands wet with tears, I made the switch.

My second anniversary alone (the seventh overall) was rather uneventful. I worked in the yard during the day, then my daughter and I went out for dinner that night. I did not watch the wedding video, but I thought about her all day and into the night.

When my daughter and I visited my wife’s stone last week, she asked me to read each item to her as she always does. Our anniversary is written on her stone, and since my daughter has a much better concept of months and dates now, she realized that July 28th was coming soon. So she suggested that we go to my favorite Italian restaurant for dinner “because I needed to celebrate my anniversary”. It was a sweet and selfless gesture, especially coming from a five-year-old, but we ultimately did not do so.

The day started off on a sour note. We had haircuts in the morning, then were to head to her appointment an hour and a half away to have her ear checked. That’s when I realized that I had forgotten something.

Now, I am not someone who forgets things easily or often. Nor am I one who accepts that I am human in the rare instance that I do forget something. But typically when I forget something, it’s something big.

One week prior to this appointment, I was supposed to begin putting ear drops into my daughter’s ear to help clear out any packing left over from her surgery. I remembered this when I grabbed my book to take with me and noticed the prescription slip inside where I had placed it, ironically, so that I wouldn’t forget! I called the doctor’s office and rescheduled the appointment for next Tuesday, but I was pretty hard on myself about my mistake.

Due to a miscommunication with the guy who was supposed to mow my yard while I was on vacation, coupled with over a week’s worth of rain, my lawn was severely overdue for a good cutting. I decided that I would take care of this when we got home following our haircuts and errands. It was a fine plan, but for one problem. The beautiful, sunny day suddenly morphed into an angry, stormy day just about the time I was ready to mow. I’m pretty meticulous about my yard, so that fact that it was overgrown and had been for quite some time did not sit well with me. (I finally got it taken care of today).

These are two seemingly insignificant events, but nonetheless are two which irritated me greatly. Still, I managed to have a pretty decent day grief-wise. Until about five o’clock when someone called to chastise me about something I had posted on Facebook. It was all in good fun, but this was the one day I really didn’t need to hear how “lame” (his word) I was. I probably would have been able to take it if he hadn’t kept on about it. But for some reason it just really bothered me.

After I hung up the phone, I realized the reason it had bothered me. He is usually one who calls to make sure I am doing okay on significant days and he hadn’t mentioned it. He hadn’t even remembered it was supposed to be my anniversary. And sadly, neither did anyone else.

I always wondered when people would stop calling on those days, but I just assumed it would be sometime down the road, when I started dating or was married again. For me, it was the third anniversary alone.

So I spent the rest of the evening thinking about the unfairness of it all. My wife and I had a good marriage. We rarely argued, and when we did, we worked it out so as not to have to go to bed angry. We communicated well. Sure, we had our share of problems, but they were minor in comparison to what a lot of other people deal with inside of marriage. In this world of marital decay, we were the ones who were supposed to make it.

I went to a 50th anniversary party for a couple once, but found little reason to celebrate. It was well-known that he had cheated on her for the majority of their marriage. So what good was it to celebrate their marriage when we were in effect celebrating 50 years of bitterness and deception?

I think there should be a qualitative measure of marriage. Forget measuring it in months and years, measure it in honesty and love instead. My wife and I had more in our five and a half years of marriage than most couples have in a lifetime.

And that’s why I continue to wear my wedding ring. Because regardless of which hand it sits on, it continues to be a symbol of our love and a tribute to our time together.