Till Death Do Us Part…

It was almost a little early for Carla to come to bed this morning. 3:17. She works a graveyard shift and usually stays up all night even when she is off, always has.

I could feel her body relax, releasing all connection to the conscious world as she slipped in on her side of the bed. Sliding up behind her, fitting like two interlocking puzzle pieces, I let go too. Although I had been about to get up and start my day, savoring the moment held me back. Lying with her there in the dark as I have for more than 40 years, still filled me with an almost giddy excitement.

It’s always been the thing I loved most, just having her with me, next to me, in our bed, together. Everything else takes a back seat. Dog water that I remembered I forgot to change, the call I have to make first thing: “Hi, Greta, I need to change my insurance and the deduction.” The never ending “to do” list that insists on a front row seat in the light of day, tugging at my shirt, demanding attention, melted away in that moment of hushed intoxication as we lay safe under the armor of flannel sheets and a tattered blue bedspread.

We couldn’t be more different, she and I. Logic dominates and controls my every step, Carla lives a stream of consciousness life without the clutter of forethought or planning,

It wasn’t always that way. My first marriage was to a college friend just like me. Same background, same balanced approach. It was my mistake to think the relationship to be more than what it was. 

Didn’t everyone get married after college when they didn’t know what else to do with their life? We agreed on most things, but had zero chemistry. It wasn’t until years later that I realized how much I needed a girl who would prance through my thought balloons and gleefully pop them with a magic pin when they got too big, overly full of my own hot air. Frustrating, alluring, necessary. Attracted to each other like the opposite poles of a magnet.

I guess the second time really is a charm.

But I knew almost immediately that I had made a mistake that first time. I was appreciative of the fact that her Mom was going to plan the wedding, as most mothers of the bride do. I only asked that it not be a big church wedding and that I have some input on the music.

We had a huge church wedding and the music at the reception was by three guys who had grown too old for the Lawrence Welk Band and now did weddings only when they were allowed out of the geriatric home.

It didn’t help that while I was waiting in the wings for the ceremony to begin, one of the bridesmaids walked past me, all red hair and freckled breasts trying to pop out of the top of her too tight dress. I felt like a starving prisoner in his cell looking out through the bars as the prison cook pushes a freshly roasted turkey with all the trimmings on a cart down the hall to the warden’s suite, now filled with Thanksgiving guests.

A natural introvert, the thought of all those eyes on me, saying those horrific “till death do us part” words, petrified me… and upset my stomach. Those were Maalox days for me anyway, even in normal times, but that afternoon I was popping antacids like candy corn.

On cue, I entered as I was told, facing the cross like a firing squad, acid reflux painting my lips with multiple cracked layers of liquefied white chalk, retching and swallowing.

It was all downhill from there.

Seven years later, most of them spent in a reclaimed bachelorhood, Carla and I eloped. Married in the front room of a Justice of the Peace whose name we can’t recall. Street clothes and one polaroid picture that never did turn out. Happily, we did.

One saving grace at my first wedding was having my good friends there, Eric and Orlando, are in this shot with me.

Other than for funerals, I don’t believe I’ve been in a church, or a tuxedo again since my first wedding day.

Somehow that seems appropriate now.