This post is in praise of the man who is still making me laugh after some 35 years of partnership.
My previous post was about how a diagnosis of an incurable, progressive, disease gives you an opportunity to reflect on life. Well, this is me reflecting on my relationship with my husband and best friend.
Like any couple who’ve been together for a long time, we sometimes drive each other nuts and bicker over silly things (or is that just us?). On our recent trip to Jordan, we’re wandering round the incredible Roman ruins of Jerash in the north of the country, and I jokingly tell him off for some ridiculously minor infraction.
In response, he quips that sometimes he feels he’s still on probation. He smilingly says he’s worried that one day he’ll find out he’s failed and I’ll tell him, as we say in my native city of Glasgow, to “sling his hook”.
This has me doubled over laughing. It makes me laugh every time I think back on it.
We’ve been together essentially since we were 21. We survived living in different cities and indeed in different countries for several years early on. We got married two children and 20 years into the relationship – almost 16 years ago – and he was the one who joked in his speech at the wedding that it had taken him nearly two decades to be sure he’d made the right choice!
The idea that I’ve yet to decide whether he makes the grade is hilarious. As he knows very well. At least I think he does. Just in case, though, I’d like to say for the record that this man who is still making me laugh out loud 35 years on has indeed passed his probation. What’s more, he’s done so with flying colours and deserves the highest distinction going.
Part of the trick to a long relationship is being willing to say sorry quickly after a falling out. It has to be said that it took both of us some time to learn this – and I confess it took me longer than it took him. On holiday, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel, Unsheltered. In it, one of the main characters says that sorry really is “the word that could never be said enough in the space of one marriage.” I think most people would agree.
Now bear with me on this next part, there is a point to it.
Recently, I’ve increasingly taken to making sure my boobs look level when I’m wearing tight-fitting clothes. When I had my right-side mastectomy in December 2015, I had a reconstruction made out of fat taken from my belly area. The radiotherapy I subsequently had robbed the reconstruction of its elasticity – it’s a known risk – with the result that the right one looks pretty much the same now as it did four years ago and the other one, ie the real one, well, doesn’t. Nature, shall we say, has taken its course. (You are allowed to laugh; we do.)
These days, therefore, it takes some readjusting when I get dressed to get that sought-after “in-bra symmetry” look.
Anyway, back to Jordan. It’s late afternoon and we’re wandering through the spectacular archeological sandstone site of Petra. The light is beautiful. He takes a photo of me at the entrance to a cavernous tomb. “That’s lovely,” he says, “I’ll post that.” It’s a close-up, and it’s going on social media. I ask, almost instinctively, “What do my boobs look like?”
What I mean, of course, is do they look lopsided or uneven in the photo? He, very deliberately, looks at my actual chest and replies with a smile, “under the circumstances, not half bad”. We both know what he means and, again, it has me laughing for ages.
I could have kept all this to myself. Shortly after our holiday, however, I happen to find myself listening to the first album in 17 years from Tanya Tucker, one of my favourite country singers from back in the day. There’s a song on it called Bring my flowers now (while I’m livin’).
You may not know this, but I am a huge country music fan. With song titles like that, how could you not be?
Anyway, the song is basically about how if you’re fortunate enough to have people in your life that you cherish, you should let them know that you appreciate them while you have the chance. Because guess what, folks, as Tanya Tucker tells us in the song, “We all think we got the time until we don’t.”
She sings: “Bring my flowers now while I’m livin’. I won’t need your love when I’m gone. Don’t spend time, tears and money on my old breathless body. If your heart is in them flowers, bring ‘em on.” Fantastically schmaltzy, even for country, but a great sentiment. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see how those lines hit a massive chord with me.
I’m the one with the incurable illness – secondary breast cancer – and you might think that my drawing attention to this song is to encourage those people who cherish me to let me know they do. In that regard, any of you reading this are indeed very welcome to “bring my flowers now” whenever and in whatever way you want. This post, though, is for my partner, who reckons that under the circumstances, we’re doing not half bad. I couldn’t have put it better myself. This is me bringing him his flowers now. I’m lucky to have him.
iamtheoneineight 