Ethel and Me and Life
I felt the need to put this back up. I miss her terribly!
If Ethel and I make it through September 2006 (sounds like a Merle Haggard song title) we’ll have been married fifty years. I met her when we were eighteen, and seven months later we married while we were still eighteen. All in all it’s been a really great trip. We didn’t make our mark in the world, our names didn’t go up in lights and the Prime Minister never called us for advice to get him out of a jam but with a lot of help we’ve seen it through this far.
The world can be a tough place and as ignorant as we were it couldn’t have been us that held things together; but I suppose there must have been something in us that wanted the help we often got. Every couple has its stories, right? My mother bore thirteen of us in tough times so we knew what it was to be hungry and if Ethel hadn’t known that earlier, she got to know it when she married me. But everyone has their troubles and we’re often too busy trying to sort them out to pay attention to another couple of kids that were struggling to keep their heads above water in more ways than one. Now and then you get the feeling that it’s just you two against the world, don’t you? We did, but here we are, nearly fifty years later, having the time of our lives.
At the top or near it of my list of favourite poet/songwriters is Paul Willliams who (with Ken Ascher) wrote You And Me Against the World. In the middle he has:
Remember when the circus came to town
You were frightened by the clowns
Wasn’t it nice to be around
Someone that you knew
Someone who was big and strong
And looking out for you...(and me against the world)
In the midst of all my many and serious failures, maybe I’ve had an honest shot at being there for Ethel when she was "frightened by the clowns". She’s spent half her life in the hospital (just about) and when I get exercised about treatment that I think isn’t right she begs me to say nothing to the staff because, she’d say, "I have to live with them." More than once that frustrated me and once when she was being prepped for very serious surgery she asked me to say nothing about something I was ready to express hard feelings about. I sulked and said something like, "Well, then, just let them do what they like with you. I won’t say a word." As they were wheeling her into the theatre and I walked beside her, still sullen, she reached out and took my arm, beckoned me down so she could whisper to me and said, "Will you look out for me?" My sulk fell dead at my feet. I poured out my heart to her about what she meant to me and told her I’d look out for her. And so it goes on. We’ve been looking out for each other all these years.
And when one of us is gone
And one is left alone to carry on
Then remembering will have to do
Memories alone will see us through
Think about the days of me and you
You and me against the world.
Love that song. Love storing up the kind of experiences that can be brought out and smiled at, cherished and made happy and inspired by. Bless me, isn’t it a wonderful life? [We made it past 50.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.