My bride on our wedding day…
Tomorrow I will celebrate my 17th wedding anniversary. The day after that I will, uh, observe my 60th birthday.
60 appeared like a small dark cloud on the horizon on my 59th birthday and has been looming larger and more threatening as the year has progressed.
I’m not sure why 60 is so rough; turning 50 was no big deal. Perhaps it just sounds so old.
I know I should simply be grateful to make it this far; it did not always seem so certain that I would.
I remember lying in a hospital bed in Canton when I was 49. I had suffered a stroke about a month before, and my bride, alarmed, insisted that I get my whole cardiovascular system examined. I had just endured a heart catheterization, when they claim to insert a tiny camera into your arteries and examine them from the inside. I am skeptical; such a thing sounds impossible. But however they did it the cardiologist, a Dr Gross, approached with his diagnosis.
It was memorable not only for the verdict but for the delivery. He had eaten a spicy lunch and his breath was awful as he bent down to speak quietly to me. Plus, he sounded like Elmer Fudd:
“I’m afwaid I have some vewy bad news. There is sevewe bwockage in thwee of your awtewies. Because of your stwoke we are going to send you to the Cwevewand Cwinic for evaluation.”
Thus, a couple of months later, when I was deemed stable, I had triple bypass surgery. I was pretty sure at that point, with two such devastating events in such a short time, that the rest of my brief life was going to be one catastrophe after another until the Big One took me out.
But I was wrong.
While I have had various ailments and minor surgeries (and needed stents a couple of winters ago) nothing has been life-threatening. I continue to walk about 10 miles a day and despite various aches and afflictions am in pretty good health, apart from these pesky cardiovascular issues.
And a few years ago…
And while I am too old for a midlife crisis, because I started so late all the elements are there: the decisions made so confidently that turned out foolish, the older kids resenting, among other things, being homeschooled when little, the million ways I turned out to have been wrong. And while I never made a decision that didn’t seem right at the time if I had to do it over I would do most things differently.
Except one thing.
I have never regretted marrying Michelle, even when it has been difficult. I fear to think what would have become of me without her. I offer this love song for my bride, and only regret that I did not write it:
Congratulations on your anniversary and on turning 60. I hit 60 nearly 2 years ago. I wish I could say I feel like I’m old and wise. Inside I still feel like I’m a kid. God bless you and your family.
Happy Anniversary!! We also celebrate our anniversary tomorrow. It will be our 39th. I’ve stopped telling people we were 13 when we got married (This is SC after all.) As for 60, it’s not bad at all. I think it’s helped me that I have siblings 13 and 8 years older than I am and doing well for the most part. My brother who’s 13 years older is my doctor so I always feel like he’s showing me the tricks of getting older without aging. I was a little irritated after speaking recently to an RCIA class and a hearing from my barber that one of the members told him he was sure I was dying my hair black. That now has me hoping for some salt and pepper up top. :)
Congrats on your anniversary, Daniel
Wow man, your wife is like Hollywood pretty. Congratulations on the adversary. Your regrets may be too personal to blog about but if your ever feel like expounding on them I would find it helpful, being about 20 years earlier in position and sharing many of the same ideals I think you have or had.
The “adversary”; what a great slip of the tongue!
Haha, perhaps my phone’s autocorrect knows more than I do!
And I think of my wife’s beauty as more Pre-Raphaelite than Hollywood..
If you count it as a milestone, then congratulations. I am two years past that and I find aging and how I am treated as hilarious. For some reason I find 50th anniversaries of things I remember as particularly funny. That and the greater significance and meaning assigned to what generation one belongs to: it is a myth dangerous in it’s immense triviality occupying what might be occupied by actual meaning.
Yours is the most Christian Christian blog I’ve run across. So much else called Christian is more vehement on Our Lord’s sponsorship of America and free market capitalism.
Congratulations! May you have many more.
Had you made a completely different set of decisions, you’d probably still be looking back with regrets. The reality is that the vast majority of decisions we make result in a mixed bag of consequences. I think it’s human nature to notice the negative ones more than the positive.
When you have a lot of kids, chances are at least a few of them are going to resent something. I just tell mine that life’s not fair, and the sooner they accept that fact, the happier they will be. I’m not sure any of them have learned the lesson yet.
Happy belated! Good job!