Posted 4-5-19
My stunningly beautiful bride and I have more than a few traditions as a couple. Caricatures and cup lids come to mind as I think through our little topic.
Caricatures: We have had at least one caricature drawn of us in each of our three decades of marriage. A caricature exaggerates the real us to show what the artist found to be the most important thing to highlight. Below is one of us and one of the kids:
Are mom and the Sweet 17 just caricatures in our minds of who they used to be? Do we see only the parts that stand out– the disease, the behavior, the blemishes–or to we focus on the “real them” as a realist painter would visualize? Are these fair questions? I am asking me too. I want to see “the real mom” and not dwell on the fat Rush Limbaugh head of problems there are (see my caricature). I want to love her exactly like she is. Some days I do well and some days I don’t. Some days I see her as a brand new Mona Lisa and other days I see her wrongly. I will give myself grace and do better tomorrow.
Cup lids? What on Earth? Tradition??
Yes! Susan and I started dating late in the Ronald Reagan administration while in high school. Most days we would hop in my Caprice Classic Landau edition and go to Git-N-Go, the local convenience store, and grab a Supreme Quart (an enormous, pancreas-killing sugary soda) on the way to school. We would then sit around in the hallway drinking said beverage, holding hands and watching our peers walk by. When we finished our 2,000-calorie chin-creation beast, we trashed the cup and straw, but we always kept the lid. Why? It had the “Other” button on the top of the lid pushed, of course, and we considered ourselves as “Other”. We didn’t fit well into any of society’s buttons/categories, if you will. We weren’t jocks, geeks, etc… We weren’t the “It” couple. We were other and we liked it. We ended up my senior year having a three-foot long shoestring completely filled with stacked “Other lids”. Suz and I, to this day, are still Other….and we will always love each “other”. 😉 (My kids can commence gagging now.)
So… what of our friends and loved ones in the memory unit? I commend to you that they are “Other” as well. Now don’t take this too far and consider them somehow something other (or especially less!) than a precious, valued child of God….They are beautiful and deeply loved, but they are certainly different than they were before the disease struck.
Love them in the “Other” category for their own merits while, all the while, remembering the simple times before when they fit neatly into the more traditional category as mom/dad/grandma/cola/diet/RB. Mom still laughs, makes jokes, plays, etc…she just does it differently than she did before. Maybe your loved one isn’t as happy? Seek out things they say or do that you can love on their own merits, or in light of better times. Don’t hold them responsible for being a “RB”, a “Diet” or a “Soda” to gain love, whether implicit or explicit, if they are an Other now. We cannot love only based on what we get from the relationship. That is an incredibly unfair standard. It is very, very hard…I totally get it. Keep your head up and do your best.
Note: I am not asking you to forget. No, not at all! Journal. Document all of the easier times. Soak in the traditions of times gone by. Share the joy of the past with your other loved ones. Fall in love, all over again, with the former loved one—the version 1.0– as a catalyst to searching out things you love that are new for version 2.
I am so thankful for the love and support I get from my family, both close and extended. I am also grateful for my mom, who, in spite of her challenges is very easy for me to love. I am also thankful for the friends I have met at the table here and pray daily often that you and I will keep up the battle and love them to the end.
#EndALZ