You never get over your person, but you learn many life lessons on this journey and hopefully the one worthy will appreciate how you love unconditionally and will love you through your good and bad days.
Dear Husband
The day I met you was the happiest day of my life. We were so young and had so much to look forward to. I was just 14, but always looked up to you. We celebrated our love everyday and to the future ahead of us on every anniversary, we had so many good memories, totally consumed by each other. We felt unbreakable, unbeatable and the future seemed to stretch ahead of us unending.
Being with you was the happiest days of my life. Shortly after our 30th anniversary you fell very ill, the aches and pains you had put down to the stress of life suddenly took over our entire lives. I have never been so scared in my life as was the day of your surgery. I sat in your hospital room numb as doctor after doctor came in telling me the risks, hospital scans, machines, needles, tubes and then you went away for awhile, my heart broke in two. They said it was called delirium and everything went dark, I had to make choices I never wanted to make. You thought I was your nurse, you hit me and called me names, it hurt so bad, but day after day I came back. I never stop being thankful that you survived and was hopeful of a future you promised me.
I held your hand every day, and told you I believed in you and to fight. I never once gave up on you or on us. We have been together for 32 years and, in that time, we have faced more heart break and sickness than most couples do in their lifetime. In the years we have been together we have both been to some dark places, so often I thought You’d fallen down a dark hole you could never come back from. Each, and every time, I tried to pulled you to safety.
You are not the man I met thirty two years ago, but I don’t say this to hurt you. You are a better man, a stronger man, a loyal man and a greater man than the one I first met.
You are also a man who has been weathered by the hardship we have faced, and a man who has felt heart break you had never felt before we were together. You are the man who had to watch the woman he loved, the strong woman, the unbreakable woman, crumble before your eyes and you couldn’t do a single thing to stop it.
I know you’ve felt helpless, and hopeless. I know you’ve been scared, felt alone and felt like everything was spiralling beyond your control. I know I have hurt you with my words as I lashed out in anger at all that was happening. I’ve blamed you for things you couldn’t control, wanted you to fix things you couldn’t possibly fix and shut you out when all you wanted to do was come into the world I had built for myself and smash down the walls I had put up.
You are not the same man on I met, you are a better man.
We have both got a lot of things wrong in our 32 years of this relationship, we have said things we didn’t mean, held onto anger longer than we should have and had too many fights over things neither one of us could control. We have taken our hurt and anger out on each other and cried too many tears in separate rooms. We were young, and relationships are hard enough without throwing in incurable illnesses into the mix. It’s an art form you must learn, it’s something you work at every day and some days it is so damn hard. Some days we worked separately when we should have been working together all along and unnecessarily burdened ourselves.
We have learned to pull the missing pieces together, and not apart.
Too often we forgot we’re both consumed by our own grief, that this illness was impacting so many more people than just us. I forgot it was hurting you just as much as me. You were just as sad, you were just as scared, and you were just as brokenhearted. I’m sorry for the times I forgot it was happening to both of us, not just me. This isn’t the future either of us hoped for, this isn’t the plan we had for our lives or our relationship. This is the hand we were dealt with though.
For every time we got it wrong, we got it right a million times more. For every time we pulled apart, we learned how to pull together. We learned how to cling to each other in the storm, and we learned how to love each other when we weren’t very lovable.
We are not our mistakes, we are what we learn from them. You are not the man I met 32 years ago and I am not the woman you met 32 years ago, but I believe we’re are better.
We aren’t the people we once were, we are older, stronger and hopefully wiser.
You are the man of my dreams, who knows what I am thinking even when I can’t find the words myself. You’re one who wipes my tears away, strokes my hair and tells me everything is going to be okay. This isn’t an easy promise to make, but I believe you because in 32 years you have shown me that together we can conquer anything.
Let me do the same for you. I promise to help you when you can’t manage, to lean on me when your not strong, to love you at your worse and love you unconditionally for always. I want to marry you and live the rest of our lives together. For better or worse I’m here.
You have gently loved me through every moment our journey.
I am not the woman you dated 32 years ago, I hope I am a better one though. I hope I am stronger, kinder and a little wiser than I used be.
I hope this journey hasn’t made me hard, but instead made me softer and gentler. I can still rise to the battle when it is needed, but I hope I have learned from you how to let some things go, pick my battles and stop holding on to anger. I hope I have learned from you how to be more forgiving of myself, and others.
Husband, you make me a better version of myself and I cannot imagine walking this journey with anyone else by my side. We’re a force to be reckoned with, and I know these years have only prepared us for all that still lies ahead. Everything we have faced in the last years has only strengthened our love and our relationship.
I don’t know what the future holds, but I know together we can overcome anything. Our relationship isn’t perfect, it’s not supposed to be, because we should never stop learning from life and each other.
We still have so much life ahead of us and even though chronic illness will always be present, I know we’re going to look back on our life and see only love, strength, resilience, happiness and adventure.
Thank you for being strong enough to love all of me. I’ll never stop thanking God that I met my best friend 32 years ago, and I’ll never stop loving you and the life we’re blessed to share.
All my love, always
Your Wife
