For Better or Worse

Snort.

“You calling pigs?”

“What are you talking about?!?” Snort.

The man in the woman sat in the kitchen eating breakfast. The orange sun rose through the yellow haze as pollen fell like powdery snow.

Snort.

“Oh, that.  Allergies. Sorry.”  Snort.

“Blow your nose.”

After 25 years, their conversation had lost its flowery edge.  There was love there, but it had been peeled back one layer at a time to a plain core.  Their relationship was more transactional now. Most of their time talking was about business, not dreams.

Snort.

“Any words from the kids?” the husband asked as he read his iPad.  The first 20 years of their marriage had been all about the kids.  The last five years were them trying to reconnect in the middle of an empty nest.  Somedays were better than others.  Today was about to be their worst.

“Julie is studying for an accounting exam.  And James is proud to report that after two years, he’s now officially a sophomore.”

“Glad he takes after you in the smarts department.”  If the wife’s eyes could shoot lasers, the husband would have burst into flames years ago.

Her cellphone rang. She put down the pot she was drying and walked over to answer it. “Funny,” he thought, “Who could be calling at this time of the morning?”   He watched as his wife said, “Hello?” He smiled. Even in her mid-forties she was as beautiful to him as she was on their marriage day. She sat silent for a moment and then said a weak, “Thank you,” and dropped the phone, breaking it into six pieces.

The husband dropped his tablet on the table and ran over to his slumped wife on the floor.  She was sobbing uncontrollably.”

“I. Have. C -c-c-c-c — uh — I have cancer.  Breast cancer. The tests came back —  positive.”

The husband felt like he had had the wind sucked out of him and then punched. For all the years, for all the fights, well,  at that moment, the one person he loved the most was being threatened.  It was an epiphany — the moment when he realized what EXACTLY mattered to him.  No, WHO exactly mattered to him.  Her. The woman in the white dress. The woman who had given birth to and practically single-handedly raised their two children. Now she was under siege by her own body.  She had to have more strength than she possessed on her own. They had taken “For Better” for granted. Now it is was time for “For Worse.”

Words failed him, but his arms did the talking.  He held her as she violently sobbed into his chest.  It was time for him to step up as a husband.  It was time for him to step up as a man.  The were on top of a frightening roller coaster and were about to head downhill. Fast.

Time passed and scars healed.  Surgery was followed by chemo and radiation. The bad cells were killed — much like the weaknesses in their marriage.  She had fallen down and he had caught her.  Twenty-five years of trespasses were forgiven at the alter of cancer.  A new, stronger relationship was rebuilt from the moment of that phone call.

On the one-year anniversary of “The call,” the husband held his wife as she slept against his chest on the couch.  He thought about all the struggles from the past year and had to smile.  When the priest had said, “For better or worse,” he thought they were two separate things. But a single phone call made him realize that the best moments in life truly can come from the worst.