42 YEARS AND COUNTING

In today’s world, many marriages, and do I dare say most, end up in divorce. Me, once I hang my hat on a star, it stays there, and I find ways to best keep it there. I have been very fortunate to have found the love of my life, and I look back over the years and realize how truly lucky I am.

It’s funny how little I need in life. I don’t necessarily want anything because I have everything: a great wife! Today marks 42 years of success, 42 years of trials and tribulations, which our marriage has endured.

It occurs to me that a question often asked is, what is the secret of a successful marriage? I can answer that in two words: NO secrets. It also helps if you throw out the word ’I’ and always use ‘we’. In my heart I use the word ‘her’ or ‘she’ because it is there that I get my comfort, my joy and my feeling of belonging.

There has to be a God, because only a God could create true bliss in life, and I have that, like I said: I am fortunate. There is a comfort in knowing my wife, a joy in knowing that she is selfless and unintentionally makes me want to give to her all I have, Marriage is not about careers, who is the boss, what do I have and you don’t, what do you have and I don’t. It IS about dedication and love, about joint hope for tomorrow and fulfilling a simple dream together: to live and die together, always in a civil sense of love and understanding.

Here is something I wrote to ‘Her’ on this past Valentine’s Day…

Dear Ellen,

Give me a flower, every time I think of you, and we will walk through that garden for an eternity. And each time you think you need me, I will hold that dear to my heart, because I know you love me in spite of my inadequacies.

I love you,

Joe

And so 42 years have come and gone, 42 years of struggles, pain but also triumph and pure joy. It takes a courageous woman to deal with what TLW (The Little Woman) has dealt with!

So…

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, ELLEN!

Thank you for your love, your support and for the wonderful children we have, all four of them. Thanks for being there for me, and for them, and thanks for all the smiles and joy, and the hand holding when I needed a hand. But most of all, thank you for committing your life to me, someone so unworthy of it.

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”

-Anonymous