Something About Mary

Riding up the elevator at work today a friend asked me, “So…how’s married life?”

“It sucks.”

She looked momentarily startled. Clearly not the response she was expecting.

“Um..OK. Why?”

“Because we live a thousand miles apart!”

Clearly that minor detail has had some adverse impact on the overall marital experience.

Obviously being married to Diane doesn’t suck. I love her very much and we grow closer every day. Well, emotionally and spiritually, that is. The physical distance hasn’t diminished one iota. We love each other very much and could not be happier to be married.

But the reality is that following our wedding we essentially returned to our respective pre-nuptial lives. We were married in a beautiful ceremony (thank you, Suzi!) in an idyllic setting (thank you, Susan!) surrounded by family and friends, some who travelled 12,000 miles (literally…thank you, Nick and Della) and some whose presence was simultaneously surprising and greatly appreciated (thanks, Mom).

Following our wedding day – literally the next day – Diane and I loaded up my pickup with our baggage (literal and metaphorical) and our respective daughters (see previous) and headed east for a wonderful week in Florida, where we all had wonderful bonding time. (The fact that Stephanie’s and Lauren’s bonding time was perhaps more exciting than ours takes nothing away from the fact that Diane and I thoroughly enjoyed our first week together as husband and wife.)

Then came the dreaded parting. One week after the wedding, we were separated (physically) once again.

Hence, it sucks.

Adding even more stress and anxiety to our status as newlyweds is that we still don’t know where we’re going to live. I don’t mean “where” as in we don’t know in which house. I mean we don’t know in which state. About the time we think the dust has settled and we have an eye on which town and state we’re going to be in, something else pops up and we’re right back to square one. We’ve been whipped back and forth more than a drunken bull rider at the Austin Rodeo.

Given the challenge of spending the first months as husband and wife 1,000 miles apart, the question several people have asked is, “Then why did you decide to get married before all that was settled?”

The answers to that question didn’t come all at once but for those curious, here is a look into our decision process.

As those who have been following our little soap opera know, we’ve had something of a whirlwind romance, nearly forty years in the making. We met when we were sixteen-years old and knew each other for less than a year before we parted ways. Thirty-eight and a half years later, we reconnected. The lives we had lived for the nearly four decades in between prepared us perfectly to come back together, though it took some time for us to really believe it was happening. (Truth is, once my knees buckled when I saw her in person after all those years, I knew. I just knew.)

Almost exactly a year after we reconnected, we decided we were going to go down that path and we became engaged. Naturally, discussions about the wedding popped up soon thereafter.

The location for the wedding came to mind almost immediately. About two months prior, I visited Diane in Texas. We went to dinner with Diane’s sister-in-law Susan (one of the Su’s-in-law), then watched the final game of the 2017 World Series at Susan’s home. Both the home and Susan were warm and welcoming and the love she had for Diane was evident.

The fact of the matter is that Diane and I would never have met each other those forty-odd years (some odder than others) earlier had it not been for her brother Rick and Susan.

So when we began talking about where to hold the wedding, I asked if Diane thought Susan would agree to us holding the wedding in her home, which she did.

But when to get married was still up in the air. But as we thought back to that early November night in Dallas, an idea began to percolate.

Like his father, Rick and Susan’s son Nick is a teacher living overseas. He was living in Taiwan with his girlfriend Della and the real star of the show, Medina. During the World Series game, Susan mentioned that Nick, Della, and Medina would be visiting the states in January and February. Additionally, Rick and Susan’s daughter Rachel would be coming from New York with her boyfriend during that same time. So Susan would have both her children – and her grand-diva Medina – visiting for a month.

The conversation between Diane and me started with, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we got married while Nick, Della, Rachel, Francesco, and Her Royal Highness the Most Exalted Medina, were in town?”

The “wouldn’t it be cool” quickly transitioned into “is it possible?” then “why not?”

So our first reason for getting married in February was so that Nick, Della, Medina, Rachel, and Francesco would be there.

But there was another reason why it made sense for us to move quickly, forty years later:

Life is short.

The decision to go forward as husband and wife and spend the rest of our lives together was already made. That deal was struck. The only remaining issue was one of timing.

With both of us having lost people close to us, we have a deep sense of just how precious our time with loved ones is. We were deeply in love, committed to each other until death do us part, so why not take advantage of a rare opportunity to have as many loved ones around us as possible on our wedding day?

And that’s what we did. The wedding day was perfect. I was able to talk with Nick a little about his Dad. I finally got to meet the dynamic Della face-to-face. I got to talk with Rachel and Francesco and even got to pay my respects to the true Ruler of the extended Boeglin family, Medina.

My mother and sister, Malinda, came from Las Vegas, along with my sister’s fiancé, Scotty. My oldest son travelled from Los Angeles. My daughter took the twenty-plus hour roadie from Jacksonville to Dallas (and back) so she could be there. Diane’s local family and friends came and one cousin and her husband even travelled from Buffalo, New York. Stephanie made the cake and invented Grooms' Balls™, and she, Brett, and Charlie stood with their mother. Malinda, Jon, and Lauren stood with me. The other Su-in-law, Suzi, officiated the wedding. Dozens of family and friends surrounded us and made our day perfect.

We were truly wrapped in a living, breathing embrace of love.

The day was so perfect that we had no doubt that we had made the right decision, despite the fact that we were going to have to go back to coffee alone every morning and Skyping before bed every night. It wasn’t optimal but the fact that we were married would – and has – sustained us as the uncertainty continues to swirl around us.

But the real reason we got married in February wasn’t revealed to us until a couple weeks after we became Mister and Missus Mayes.

Among the family surrounding us on February 10, 2018 were Uncle Frankie and Aunt Mary. When Diane’s parents passed away, it was Frankie and Mary who stepped in to be grandparents to Brett, Stephanie, and Charlie and to be Diane’s anchor as she navigated the rough seas on her own.

When I went to see Diane in November, we arranged to stop by and spend some time with Frankie and Mary, along with Diane’s cousins Kaye and Karl. The meeting was ostensibly so I could meet them but I was astute enough to know that it was really one of the final interviews before I would be allowed to join clan Boeglin/McIntosh. As have been all my interactions with Diane’s family, the visit was filled with warmth and love and I left grateful that I was getting a new Uncle and Aunt (and cousins) in the bargain.

Side note: Two things I remember most vividly about Mary from the visit to her and Frankie’s home were both related to her love of Texas. As an outsider (non-Texas resident), Mary showed me just how much she loved her adopted home state. Her “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got her as quick as I could,” made me chuckle. And she wore a ring, silver or white gold, with a small charm in the shape of Texas attached to it. So I got the sense that the fact that Diane and I were married in Dallas gave the union greater credibility in Mary’s eyes.

At the wedding, Mary was resplendent in a yellow dress, awash in grace, dignity, and love. She and my mother sat and visited for a long time and her innate ability to make everyone she encountered feel like the most important person the room was felt everywhere, by everyone. But this was no surprise. It was typical of her. It’s just who she was.

A few days after the wedding, we got word that Mary had suffered a heart attack and was in the hospital. The prognosis seemed promising but just as sudden as the notice that she was in the hospital came the word none of us wanted to hear.

Mary left us on February 21, 2018, eleven days after she watched Diane and I exchange our vows. Eleven days after she kissed us goodbye – on the mouth, of course – she passed on, joining Ronnie, Audrey, both Charleses, Rick, Tim, Daniel, and the rest of our loved ones who welcomed Aunt Mary home.

Before this, when people asked us why we got married in February, forty-some-odd days after we got engaged, we said that we wanted Nick, Della, Rachel, Francesco, and The Magnificent Medina to be there on our special day. We told them that life was short and we saw no point in waiting since we already knew that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

We told them what we thought were the real reasons.

But the reality was that it wasn’t our minds that led us to choose that date. It was our hearts and our spirits. It was as though some force greater than us was guiding our decision, a decision neither Diane nor I ever questioned, before or since.

We got married on February 10, 2018 because were supposed to, though if pressed, we’d have had a difficult time expressing exactly why.

Now we know why.

Mary had to be there.

And she had to kiss us good-bye one last time.

On the lips. Of course.