Remembering the Bad Stuff

Nothing Is Ever 100 Percent Perfect

Those of you who have been following my blog probably know that my husband was the love of my life. My everything. He was my whole world. We were married for 22 years. And then he died.

When someone you love passes away, I think it’s quite natural to only remember and reminisce about the good stuff about them, at least in the beginning: All the great things we miss about them. All the wonderful times together. My husband and I had a great marriage, it was close to perfect. But nothing is ever 100 percent perfect; after all, we’re only human, we make mistakes.

Some Marital Issues

The last couple of years before his passing were difficult. Don’t get me wrong, I loved him with all my heart, and still do. But we started having some problems. He had changed, maybe I had too. I don’t know. I think some of it may have had to do with his illness. It seemed like his personality had changed, and I now wonder if this might have been caused by the brain tumor (his lung cancer had spread). Let’s just say that sometimes we had very different opinions and the harmony vanished, but usually returned after a few hours or the next day.

Would Our Marriage Have Lasted?

I’ve been asking myself that question more often lately. One of my children, already divorced once, is contemplating marrying again, so this has been on my mind increasingly. If my husband and I, who had so much love for one another, started having some issues in our “perfect” marriage, how can any marriage really last? I hate to write anything that paints my husband and our marriage in a negative light, and that is certainly not my intent. I’m just being honest. Lately I’ve been thinking about us as a couple and what might have become of us had he not passed away. Would we still be together? Would we have been able to work out our differences? I don’t know. We didn’t fight much at all, but there was one (very important) issue we couldn’t agree on during those last couple of years, causing some cracks in our “perfect” marriage.

And there is definitely some hurt from words and actions, whether intentional or unintentional, and many unanswered questions: Why did he say this? Was it to insult me or did he simply not realize the effects of those words that day? Why did he do that? Did he not know that it hurt my feelings? I should have spoken up back then. Now I’ll never know. Too late to ask him.

I’m sure I did things that weren’t helpful and nice either sometimes. Like I said, nobody is perfect and no marriage is 100 percent perfect. I just regret not questioning some stuff while I still could. Now it’s too late and I’ll never know. I also regret not working on our differences about this one important issue sooner (It was the only thing we ever seriously fought about). Could we have overcome these major disagreements? I often wonder…

All these regrets and unanswered questions… But one thing I know for sure: Even though there were some problems towards the end, I did love him with all my heart, I still do, and always will.