Today – Aug. 17 – always was special in my family. A day to celebrate. On this day in 1958, my parents married.
Every year on their anniversary, I’d ask my dad the same questions my brothers and sister did. “How long have you and Mom been married?”
“Hmmmm,” he’d answer. “How old is your brother?”
“40.”
“Then we’ve been married . . . 39 years.”
Then I’d ask, “You ever think about divorcing Mom?”
“Divorcing her?” he’d ask, shocked at the notion. “Noooo!”
A pause.
“Thought about killing her though.”
Don’t even. He was joking. It was a different time.
And then he’d follow up with a story about a time Mom got exasperated and told him she was going to leave.
“That’s OK,” he answered her. “I’ll go with you.”
None of these are great jokes, but they got better every year. With time, they morphed from corny to comforting. I looked forward to calling my parents on their anniversary and going through our annual schtick. I looked forward to hearing my mom roll her eyes – she has really loud eyes – at it.
Even now, I smile when I think about it.
And I miss it.
Dad died almost seven years ago, and the meaning of this day changed. It’s still something to celebrate, but it’s tinged with sadness.
For all my life, August 17 meant one thing. Now it means something else. Strange how that goes, how something as permanent as “meaning” can change, and how dates that have no particular meaning suddenly become fraught. December 7th, 1941 meant nothing on December 6th. And 9/11 meant nothing on 9/10. Only in America does the Fourth of July matter.
(My father, incidentally, was born on the Fourth of July, so Independence Day always had two meanings in my family. Now that day, like today, like Father’s Day, has another. And October 12, the day he died, has a significance it never did. A different kind of anniversary.)
There’s this cliché about time healing all wounds. I don’t think it’s true. Time changes the way wounds feel, just like time changes the way celebrations feel. One year I don’t like what isn’t, another year I don’t like what is. One year I like what isn’t, another year I like what is.
I’ll call my mom today, as I do every day. We’ll talk about Dad and his silly jokes. I’ll ask what she’s doing and I’ll hope she’s spending at least part of it with my sister, who lives nearby and who celebrates her own anniversary today.
I sent my sister a text message a little while ago.
“How long have you and Jon been married?”
She answered:
“How old is Ben?”
