Tag: Marriage

Soul mate and saviour

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I’ll try and say this in one ‘obituary-like’ sentence (as J.D. Salinger might have written, in fact, did write, about Seymour Glass):

Guido Michelini, that irresponsible womanizing jackass who shows up on this blog from time to time, is the ghost of my former self who came to his senses when his/my son committed suicide at twenty-three, and the person who got me through that hell, in fact saved my own worthless life, was one of the players, as was I, in the drugged-up, gin-swilling sex-o-rama of the 1970s, and who some time later became my wife and continued to keep me sane and gave me a reason to live, until her own death last year, just before Christmas, which, as I’ve written, was for the most part my death too.

Unconditional love

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The great thing about S. was that she loved the bum no matter what.

CABIN IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
He sometimes didn’t treat her as well as he should have (moods, stress, personal problems, and so forth), and even when they were apart for periods of times over the years, as when he rented a cabin in northern New Hampshire after the death of his son and lived there alone for many months, they’d talk on the phone every day and she was understanding and continued to stick by him (she flew up to Boston one holiday weekend and he picked her up at the airport and they drove three hours to the cabin).
And she never cared what he looked like, always accepted him as he was. She got him through all the bad times — hell, before S., he had a girlfriend in California who got so mad at him she threw his suitcase off the balcony of her sixth floor apartment — it busted wide open when it hit the ground, clothes went flying; another girlfriend before S. broke up with him on a bitterly cold New Years Eve outside Bloomingdales department store; and so on and so forth. But not S., never S.
ROCK STEADY
The foundation of their relationship was built on rock, unlike the relationship with the California girl that was built on sand, and the relationship with the Bloomie’s girl that was built on quicksand.
His one consolation after S. died was that he had looked after her during the last few years. She went through hell, four long stays in hospitals and nursing homes. He would help her shower, dress, walk, provide the meals, many other things to do with day-to-day living. He was a good caregiver, like his brother was to his own wife for several years when she came close to death a couple of times.
A few weeks before S. was taken to the hospital for the last time she said to him, I am so lucky to have you look after me, you’ve been good to me. And he said, And I’ll do it until the day I die. Being six years older he believed he would go first. But it wasn’t to be.
HER WARM HAND
At the end, when she was on life support, he held her still-warm hand in his and talked to her about the good times, their visit to Australia and Europe and so many other wonderful times, and it’s possible, he was told, that she could hear him; and then her hand fell from his… the nurse removed the breathing tube…
It’s been a bad day, like all the days since she died, and now he goes to bed after several beers, rum, wine, brandy, and finally, Xanax.

Sex, drugs and marriage

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They drank and they did drugs and they had sex with anyone they fancied, it was the 1970s, who didn’t!

And then to everyone’s surprise they got married. As the years went by he found out that she had been to bed with some of his mortal enemies, and she already knew that he had slept with some of her girlfriends — one of them she had to climb through a window to save after she tried to kill herself when he dumped her.

But that was okay with her, and he learned to live with the fact that she had slept with his former enemies. They went beyond that, they became, if you’ll pardon the expression, soul mates, and ended up being together for thirty years, and when she died, for the most part, he died too.