Throwback Thursday: It was 50 years ago today

Today would have been Judy's and my 50th wedding anniversary.  It was a day we'd talked about a little and looked forward to a lot.  Judy had really hoped to be around for it, but it didn't work out that way.  She came up six months and seven days short.  

I haven't written much about her illness here because she didn't want me to.  She was a private person and stoic in facing her illness.  She was steel.  One day a few months before she died, we were talking about what might happen, and my voice cracked.  I probably had tears in my eyes.  Judy said, "Don't be maudlin.  If I die, I die, and that's it.  We've done all we can."   Steel?  Titanium is more like it.  Never once did I see her cry or weaken.  It must have been tough because she went through a lot.  Some of the chemo treatments were brutal, though I'm the only one who ever knew because to everyone else, she was relentlessly cheerful and polite. When ever anyone asked how she was doing, she'd always say, "Fine."  Nobody was ever going to hear her complain, except me, and that was the way it was.  I may have mentioned before that one of the nurses called me and said this about Judy: "That Mrs. Crider was always a lady, always dressed so nice, she never complained, not once."

The last week that she was in the hospital, I asked if she wanted to watch The Young and the Restless, and she said she didn't.  "But it's your favorite soap," I said.  "Bill," she said, "you just don't know how bad I feel."  That's a close as she ever came to complaining.

We dated (a quaint, old-fashioned custom, whippersnappers) for several years before we married, and in all we knew each other for well over 50 years.  That's a lot of memories, little things we shared that nobody else knows about -- jokes, trivial incidents, favorite songs and movies -- all things that nobody knows now except me.  Every day there's some little something that I want to tell her, that I know would make her smile, but that wouldn't mean a thing to anyone else.  

It's taken me a while to get used to being in the house alone, but I'm doing better at it.  It's taken me even longer to do other things.  We loved going to movies and for many years we went just about every week.  I've managed to get to one movie in the last six months and that was only recently (Mad Max: Fury Road).  I don't like going out alone.  I still haven't been to a restaurant alone.  Eating out was a lot of fun for the two of us.  It wouldn't be so much fun for just me.  I've been out with friends, and that's okay.  Sooner or later I'll make it out on my own, I think, but it might be a while.

What with my books and writing and the Internet, I manage to keep busy, and most of the time I can keep my mind occupied.  Distraction is good in cases like mine.  Sometimes grief sneaks up on me, though.  I have a feeling it's going to be doing that for a long time.  

When we were young and living in Brownwood, Texas, the local paper would often publish before-and-after shots of couples on their 50th anniversary, one shot of them when they were married and a current one.  Judy would often say, "We must remember not to do that."  So she's probably get me for this if she were here.   This is the closest thing I have to an "after."  It was taken in Sonoma in August last year.  I think Judy was as beautiful as ever.

If you think of it today or this evening, raise a glass to me and Judy on what would have been our 50th.  That will be our celebration.