… But my December appears to be on the mend!

Posted by Gayle

Doggie Depression

A lot has happened in the last 24 hours and with the exception of two pretty depressed Boogie Woogie Beagle Boys, the news is good.  Ron had his best day yet today.  This was totally unexepected as it was the day after surgery number 2.  He seems to have turned a huge corner.  I say “seems” because this has been such a roller coaster ride, I’m hesitant to get my hopes too high.  The reason for the dramatic change?  Probably a couple of factors.  First, the nasty, icky, stuff that infection is made of has been removed from his knee.  Second, he’s off of the 10 mg. morphine injections every three hours and now has a pain pump filled with dilaudid.  Less medicine is administered more often. This means he’s lucid!!!  Ron bypassed being a flower child in the 60′s and his experience with getting high generally involved an airplane.  Mass quantities of opitates do not make him funny, goofy, or cute.  They make you think he is dying.

Other good news includes the fact that the antibiotics are working and the almost certain probablity that when he is released he will actually come home!  A new doctor was introduced into the mix (the Rehabilitation Specialist) and it seems the hospital has an intensive physical therapy program he can do as an inpatient.  Since he’s going to be a “guest” in the hospital for several more days, it would be fabulous for him to start rebuilding his strength in the on-site Physical Therapy Clinic.  One thing I know for sure… those who work with him,  will earn their wings!  The word cantankerous comes to mind .  Of course I mean this in the most complimentary of ways.  I saw an Occuptational Therapist working with him the other day and she wasn’t taking any of his guff.  I was so impressed, I  almost asked her to be a sister wife.

Bonus Daughter #3 (or #2 depending on how you count), arrived in Dallas today for a 3 day visit.  She volunteered not only to sit with her Dad while I was working,  she offered to help with things here at home.  I’m wondering if cleaning out my closets and garage would consititute therapeutic aid?

Yes my sense of humor is returning, but evidently my smile hasn’t.  I almost cried tonight when Ron told me he was looking forward to the day when my smile returned.  I’ve done a lot of introspection and what I discovered is that I feel like I am about 8 years old when I wake up in the morning.  I feel little.  I am alone and I am scared.  The fear isn’t of just one thing or really anything specific.  It’s generalized fear and insecurity.  By the time I finish my shower and start my first session of the day, the adult Gayle has returned.  I am hoping this awareness will help me do a better job understanding what’s happening in the morning.  It can be so hard to comfort and soothe oneself. And yet the ability is key to our survival and the survival of our marriages.  David Schnarch talks about this in his books Passionate Marriage and Intimacy and Desire.  His research indicates that the ability to soothe oneself and quiet your own mind and heart is critical to the success of your relationship.

I am the first to raise my hand and say that I  depend too heavily on validation from Ron to soothe me and quiet my mind and heart.  I can clearly see an “opportunity” to learn better how to do this for myself as a result of this situation.  What’s extraordinary about this awareness is that the concept was presented to me by David Schnarch himself last Wednesday night at SMU only a few hours before Ron ended up in the ER.  We left the lecture a few minutes early because Ron’s pain was soaring.  Some troubling experiences in the last couple of years left me questioning one of my fundamental beliefs…. what we call serendipity is really sychronicity. If my faith in sychronicity is restored as a result of Ron’s hellish infection, this whole experience will soon end up on my gratitude list!

I don’t know what tomorrow brings.  In this moment, I feel optimistic (and very tired.)   I will continue to pray for peace and the willingness to  do what must me done with a grateful heart.

Night folks….  dreamland is calling.

Reflections on Resilience

Posted by Gayle

I’ve posted a lot today. I wasn’t posting that much before Ron’s staph infection became apparent.  Why would I start with such a vengeance now?

Age-gap couples listen up.  Hell anyone in a relationship listen up.  Okay if you are alive on this planet and interact with any other humans listen up!

Control is an illusion – a necessary illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.  I’m not in Japan today and honestly I’d rather be right here – the younger wife of an older man with a nasty staph infection that is bringing him enormous pain.  But Ron and I have something in common with the people of Japan and so do you.  Your whole life can change in an instant.  I happen to think it’s best not to focus on that everyday.  If I did, I would be scared silly.  Am I scared today?  Yes…. very.  So why am I blogging?  To feign control.  I find it comforts me.

I’m tired and I don’t much feeling like exploring all the potential blessing that might come from our situation although I do believe there will be some.  But this tired human woman wants to go to bed and at the same time is afraid of that bed… it is empty.  My husband isn’t in it.  I left him (finally) well sedated in a hospital room.  I’ve got quite a few more nights alone in my bed.  I’ve made mistakes today, I done a few things right, I coped the best I could, I loved him, and I even wondered if I really meant to sign up for all this.

Honestly, what I signed up for were the good times.  I heard the vow about “for better or worse”, but until you get some years under your married (or committed relationship) belt you have no idea just how bad worse can be….thankfully.  Just like you probably don’t want to know the date of your death, you really don’t want to know about worse either.

However I do want you to know about one thing.  It is the gift of resilience.   We humans are innately resilient. Resiliance gets us through things we never thought we could endure.  If you’re in your relationship or even just your life for the long haul, then learn to recognize and trust your reslience.  It’s there for you even when you don’t believe it is.  I saw my rock whimper like a small child today.  I hope he doesn’t remember it.  I always will, but even as he whimpered I knew he would survive.  Why?  Because I’ve seen his resilience in action and I trust him to find it even when he doesn’t believe he can.

You all know that I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces – my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope. These graces have carried me through difficult times and they have brought more joy to the good times than I ever could have imagined.

Elizabeth Edwards
May She Rest in Peace

Posted by Gayle

This morning, Good Morning America did a segment on real Modern Families. Today’s family was a couple with a 30 year age gap!!! We are becoming more and more mainstream by the second! Such exciting times for all of us gappers!

http://abcnews.go.com/gma/ModernFamily

Related articles

• Real ‘Modern Family’: Age Only a Number (abcnews.go.com)
• “Good Morning America” Grows in Total Viewers: Week-to-Week, Year-to-Year and Season-to-Date (tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com)

Posted by Gayle

This is the most refreshingly honest post I’ve seen written about May-December couples!   I. love. it.

How about you?

“May-December” and Life..

(Posted by Maya)

May-December: Canadians in age-discrepant relationships
Canadian Social Trends Autumn 2003
by Monica Boyd and Anne Li

North Americans often assume that most married or common-law partners are close in age to each other and this, in fact, tends to be the case most of the time. There are, however, exceptions, couples with substantial age gaps between them. Although the typical pattern for age-discrepant marriages is the so-called “May–December” relationship, in which the woman is much younger than the man, the reverse also may hold.  Read entire article now.

Maya’s Critical Review

This article appeared in Statistics Canada’s “Canadian Social Trends” publication in the fall of 2003. It is a study of Canada’s 2001 Census of Population, with a focus on age-gap unions. I have been unable to find citations of this article, but I believe that, despite dealing exclusively with Canadian data, it provides important information that may have resonance with Americans as well.

Read the rest of this entry »