#1 TATWTD "NOT DYING"

“TATWTD” – Post #1  NOT DYING

c. 1978  

My California kitchen was warm, my relationship to my husband of twenty years, was not. My dearly loved grandmother, Martha Elizabeth, visiting from Arizona, stood beside me at the sink, helping me peel potatoes and carrots.

Granny had endured an utterly unfulfilling 50-some year marriage. Dave and I were twenty years into our marriage, nowhere near “unfulfilling,” but that particular summer of Granny’s visit, we were less than satisfied with each other’s company.

“Granny,” I said. “How did you do it? How did you manage all those years without intimacy, without a sense even of being loved?” I’m sure I added more but those were my primary questions. A major aspect of my being is selective curiosity and that day in my kitchen I was specifically curious about her unrewarded endurance. 

My grandmother’s hands fell still; her voice, as well. She turned her gentle eyes to me and then slowly, to a window; to a Silk Oak tree just outside. The pause she produced caused my heart to pound. I put down the vegetable peeler and waited.

“You know,” she said softly, “You just learn to die a little at a time.” She turned back to me, back to our trust in one another, to truth. 

You die a little at a time. You save a marriage.

No,I thought. No. I will not save a marriage by dying a little at a time.

Poor Dave. When he returned that evening from days of being Mr. Very Important Airline Pilot, he found a wife ready for a relational course correction. Being the good man he was (is), he asked for a fortifying dinner prior to the hard work of feisty conversation. 

Nope. No dying for the sake of an institution, no dying for pretended partnership. Nope. No dying along the way to dying.. I vowed that day to keep things very alive.  

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