CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith and Life from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter
Today Helen and I start
our 59th year of marriage, so it seems like an appropriate time to
repost this from 5-31-2012. I have updated the numbers.
“One
of you will die first.”
That’s
what Jeanette Ericson said the day she and Darrol went with Helen and me to
ride the riverboat. It wasn’t much of a boat, and not much of a river, but we
had a good lunch, and it was fun. Until Jeanette told the truth, when I said “If one of us dies first…”
Well,
of course. Either Helen or I will die first. It is highly unlikely that we
shall die together. We have done all else together, but this we cannot. Today
we start our 59th year of marriage, but at some time after all these
years together, one of us shall finally be left alone.
Within
our circle of friends, the wives die first: Dianne Bass, Jean Cramer-Heuerman,
Eileen Wilkey, Ruth E. White, Joyce Peacock, Ila Fisher, Darlene Barrett, Dee
Lemkau, Rose Mary Shepherd, Eunice Snider, Phyllis Graham Parr, Linda Soper,
Jan Rossow Brown, Betty Dees, Mardel Nestler, Jerri Travelstead, Pat Keller,
Catherine Smith, Barbara Shipley, Betsy Linneman, Marian Ekin…
We,
of course, have friend couples where the men have died first, but mostly it’s
been the men who have been left alone.
This
has been sobering. For many years, insofar as I thought about it at all, I
assumed I would die first. That is the way it goes in general. But now I see so
many of my men friends living alone, and I realize it could happen.
I
have tried my best for 58 years to keep the vows–for better or worse, in
sickness and in health, in [relative] rich or in poor. Now the time is closer
for until death do us part.
Certain
members of our family think that I will be remarried in 6 months if Helen
should die first. Not so. I shall be hugely lonely for HER should I be left
alone, but I shall not be lonely in general.
Those
family members think I would HAVE to remarry because I need a caretaker. They
think that I cannot take care of myself because in 58 years of marriage I never
have. [As Helen famously said, “Men enter assisted living the day they get
married.”] I do have someone who takes care of me, but I don’t NEED someone to
take care of me. I can LEARN to cook, to do the laundry, the taxes, etc. [I’m
not asking for a show of hands on this.]
That’s
not really the major issue, though, is it?
Paul
Tournier says: “You are never too young or too old to give your life to Christ;
after that, what else is there to do to get ready to die?”
I
think that’s true about aloneness, too. You are never too young or too old to
give your life to Christ. After that, what else is there to do to get ready to
be alone? Because after that, you are never alone.
JRMcF
The “place of winter”
mentioned in the title line is Iron Mountain, in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula,
where life is defined by winter even in the summer! We moved from there to
Bloomington, IN, where we were married on this date so long ago.
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