My husband and I witnessed a fatal accident. He’s trained in first aid so he and an EMT who happened to be there went to the aid of the people in the crash. The EMT went to one car and my husband went to the other. It was pretty evident the guy was almost gone (it was a really bad accident). There wasn’t really anything he could do, but he held his hand while the guy took his last breaths.
I could tell you tons of other stories, though. Like when my littlest son was in the hospital as an infant. I went home to stay with our older son and my husband spent the night with the baby. They had a parents room he could have gotten a decent night’s sleep in, but he stayed with our son and let him sleep on his chest so he wouldn’t be scared or alone if he cried.
Oh, and today, when I told him about some stupid drama I’m having with some women I know, he acted like he understood and he sided with me, even though I know the whole thing is stupid and trivial.
Well… you brought tears to my eyes. My husband has said something to similar effect, that I have helped him to learn to stand up for what he believes in. Sometimes it gets overwhelming when you realize the power of two people who are committed to the same thing… much more powerful than a single person alone. I give him many props for his strength, but I have also come to terms with the truth that I give him strength, too. That is when we are doing our best… when we are so focused on our mutual values that we are a support for one another.
Whenever we start fighting because we’re stressed out, he says, ‘‘Let’s be allies.’’
And I say, ‘‘Okay. You get to be France. I’ll be Great Britain.’’
Or, more recently (and I blush to say it) ‘‘You be the Klingon Empire. I’ll be the Federation.’’
It’s really incredible how much things can open up when you give just a little bit of yourself… and then the other person gives just a little bit back… and soon you are just both nourishing one another. It really can be something incredible.
She completely remodeled our bathroom while I was out of commission last year, including totally redoing the floor and installing a new cast-iron bathtub.
The above aborted message from me was because I was influenced by the heartwarming posts of others, and I was trying to come up with the BEST thing my husband has done, as, you know, a human being, and was having trouble deciding on one.
Then I realized that one of the coolest things I ever saw him do was one of the funniest. A few years ago, our neighbor had a dog that was quite barky and spent a lot of time in the back yard. The dog belonged to the guy who rented her garage apartment and if for some reason he didn’t come home until very late, the poor dog stayed out in the yard and barked at anything. This usually wasn’t a problem on our very quiet street, but we had houseguests that weekend, and there was a lot of activity in our guest room which was very near the corner of the yard where neighbor doggy generally hung out. Neighbor Doggy was barking. And barking. And barking. Well into the wee hours of Saturday morning. I was wearing ear plugs and it was still bothering me. I was seriously considering going to knock on the neighbor’s door and wake them up (at 2:30am) and ask her to bring the dog indoors. My husband was concerned with this because our neighber is an older lady and we knew it was her boarder’s dog, so he said he’d Take Care Of It. He wouldn’t tell me what he was going to do, though… he said he just wanted to go see if it had a possum or raccoon cornered or something like that. So he went outside and came back about ten minutes later, and the dog is absolutely silent. I asked if the neighbor had brought the dog in. No. The dog didn’t have anything cornered either.
My husband had just gone out there and peed up and down the fenceline to distract the dog from barking! He figured the dog would be so busy sniffing and re-marking his territory that he’d stop barking for a while.
I sat there like this :eek: for a good 10-15 seconds and then laughed so hard I literally fell off the bed. The subversive brillance of it charms me to this day.
When my dad drank himself to death and rotted in the house for a few days, my husband cleaned up the liquid mess his decaying body left. He says he will never tell any of us what that was like. My husband is a very, very good man.
Yes. A card. For our anniversary. He’s never given me a serious card - hell I can’t remember if he’s ever given me a JOKE card - and this was after we had been together ten years (married four). I keep it in my purse and still pull it out and read it now and then.
On the outside it says:
Happy Anniversary to My Wife.
I should be mad at you
For coming into my life
and turning things
every which way…
For flashing that smile
that melts my heart
and makes me forget
what I was saying
First inside page:
…for the way thoughts of you
constantly interrupt my days
and make it
next to impossible
for me to focus
on anything
but the shape of your eyes
and the softness of your lips…
Second inside page:
I should be mad at you
but I’m just too busy
being in love with you.
Then he signed it.
It’s never happened before, and I doubt it will ever happen again - and it’s a memory I’ll treasure forever.
I’ve mentioned before that my Mom is bipolar, and has never really admitted it. It gave me a weird childhood, and I still have enormous anxiety about her behaviour, and worries about whether or not she’ll start rapid cycling and have to be hospitalized. Which she absolutely hates, because she thinks there’s nothing wrong with her, especially when she’s manic. She gets paranoid, stops sleeping, tries to buy houses, tries to administer drugs to people around her (bad when I was a kid), goes on huge spending sprees, and becomes somewhat violent. From when I was three months until thirteen years, she was hospitalized at least four or five times. Involuntarily. Screaming death threats at everyone.
She’s been more or less okay for more than ten years.
A couple of years ago she started behaving erratically again. We were in near-constant communication with my Dad and the doctor about it, what to do, how soon it would be necessary to get papers to get her put in hospital, who was going to be responsible etc. It was giving me enormous anxiety and terror. Mr. Lissar and my Dad agreed that no matter what, the responsibility for hospitalization, treatment, and generally dealing with her would be theirs. Not mine.
I can’t express how much that means to me.
Thankfully she started to respond to increased medication, and it wasn’t necessary to go through with plan b, but we all know that she could become massively unstable again at any time. And I know that they’ll deal with it, if it happens. I’m so grateful.
I have several stories about my husband and since today’s our anniversary I’m gonna spill the beans on him.
We got married four years ago, and I needed major abdominal surgery four weeks later. He was there through everything, and even though I was out of it, he didn’t leave me because I asked him during a brief awake spell to please stay. So he did. The kicker for me was we had a La-Z-Boy recliner that I knew would be so comfy to sit in since I could use the rocker motion to get up (always a challenge after those abs have been sliced and diced) but it was in the basement.
When he brought me home, there was the huge recliner in our living room. I have no idea how he got it up the stairs alone because that thing was a massive unwieldy beast to move, but he did.
Fast forward two years and I had major abdominal surgery AGAIN. This time we were living in our current house which has a bazillion stairs which are a no no when recovering. So every day he’d bring up snacks and stuff so I could stay on the second floor as much as possible.
Then last year I had major abdominal surgery AGAIN (are you counting along with me? That’s three major surgeries before we hit our third anniversary), and he didn’t flinch (although he said he thought perhaps my warranty had expired).
I love him madly and I’m so glad I’m married to him.
Are you my wife? Only difference is it’s now 30 abdominal surgeries in the past 5 years.
My wife just generally amazes me. She survived an emotionally and physically abusive childhood, told her wealthy dad to shove his money and paid her own way through college, made a success of herself in sales without having to rely on daddy for a job. She subjected herself to fertility drugs and treatments, went through 6 miscarriages (including 3 in the second trimester), buried the three late term babies, has been living with an open abdominal wound for 5 years and still she manages to keep going. And she takes Geritol every day.
She is the best part of my life and I can’t imagine a world without her.
Wow, we’re all so lucky. Most of these are making me tear up.
The coolest thing I’ve ever seen my SO do was quit his very high paying, although time consuming and draining, job in the oil field to pursure his dream. His dream that would pay about 40% of what his oil field job was paying.
So as of February 2007 he’s a Fire Fighter, and we’ve figured stuff out and we’re surviving. It’s worth it to not have expensive things just to see him so happy.
I’ve read your threads ::nod nod:: and while I don’t have the open wound and haven’t yet (knock on wood) reached double digits for major surgeries (only seven), I feel for her.
He thinks I had the harder time what with the mysterious growing lumps and all, but really I can’t imagine being the support person the way he’s been. I think his role was FAR harder–I just went under the anesthesia and woke up eventually. He had to wait and wait as each of the three he’s been around for took roughly twice as long as they should have.
I love your last line, and will shamelessly steal it with appropriate gender changes for my own use with him:
Not nearly as cool or deep or touching as most of the above. What’s more, it was my ex-wife…with whom, may I add, I am still very close.
When it comes to handling animals, there are some people who have “the Gift”. Call it ESP, call it a peaceful aura, call it a tranquilizing magnetic field, I don’t care. But whatever it is, Michelle has it.
During our marriage, she spent many of her days volunteering at our local zoo. Very quickly the full time keepers picked up on the fact that there was something special about her ability to handle animals. It wasn’t long before they started giving her access to areas where volunteers were not allowed. There were quite a few of them who could easily have lost their jobs had a supervisor been around, but they willingly (and without her ever asking) took the risk just to watch her interacting with some of the more tranquil exhibit animals.
I once watched as she stood by the alligator pit and called to one of the overgrown handbags (I jest) in a low, growling rumble. The thing lifted its head, looked directly at Michelle, and took two or three steps towards her. The keeper responsible for the alligator pit was standing right there, and gaped in astonishment. “How’d you do that?” she said. "I’ve never seen him move for anybody."
One exhibit had an aquarium with some very large freshwater fish, including a four foot South American river catfish that Michelle had decided to call “Chester”. Virtually every time she approached the class of the tank and placed the flat of her hand up against it, Chester would swim over and “kiss” the glass on the other side of her palm. He did not do this consistently with anyone else.
A spider monkey known as Mikey decided that Michelle was part of his harem. Every time she passed by the exhibit, which was an island separated from the public by a moat, Mikey started throwing out his hands and chattering at her in a livid manner. Evidently, he was insisting that she come back over to her spot on the island where she was supposed to be, and to stop flirting with all the other monkeys out there.
The most amazing thing I saw her do didn’t take place at the zoo, but at a bus stop. As we were awaiting our ride home, she noted a pigeon that had gotten its feet badly tangled in the unspooled ribbon of some castaway cassette tape. Michelle walked over, bent down, and picked up the pigeon with her bare hands. Alternating between stroking its back and unraveling the ribbon, she freed it from its bonds, then gently set it down. I handed her a bottle of sanitizing lotion from her purse and she casually cleaned her hands, not even noticing the gawks of amazement from the crowd of bystanders.
Another one that might not be as outwardly amazing as some of the posts I’ve seen here, but I still think it’s pretty cool.
Spouse never had cats growing up, so he never really got to know whether he liked them or not (his family didn’t like them). Further, he’s allergic. But I’ve loved cats every since I was a little kid and knew that when I grew up and had my own place, I wanted cats of my own.
The first cool thing he did (without my even asking him to) was to have allergy treatments so we could have cats. This is even cooler since he has a phobia about shots. He did this for a couple of years until we were finally able to buy our own place, and we got our cats. He fell in love with them almost instantly and became as much of a cat person as I am. But this still isn’t the coolest thing.
A couple of years ago, our Russian Blue baby, Meep, was diagnosed with lymphoma. It devastated both of us–she was the sweetest cat I’d ever known, and she was only five years old. We put he through a course of chemo that she handled very well (she was herself up until very close to the end) but eventually the chemo began to fail and we knew she wasn’t going to be with us much longer. But Spouse was perfectly attentive to her, doing every bit of his share of the work–mixing up soft smelly food for her because she didn’t want to eat, spoon-feeding her, just holding her…I couldn’t ask for him to be more loving and attentive. When I had to go away for a weekend near the end, he gave up his vacation to stay home with her (if I’d have known it was as close as it was to the end, I’d have stayed home too, but unfortunately neither of us knew how fast she was fading at that point). Every time I see him being kind to one of the cats, doing silly things with them, loving them…it makes me love him a little bit more. He could easily just go through the motions for me, but I know he loves them as much as I do, and he’d do anything for them. And that’s cool.
The coolest thing Rick ever did resulted in our 4th cat. I had seen a kitten that morning and couldn’t get it out of my head. It was meowing, in the rain, under a truck at local restaurant. Little stripey kitten. Anyway, that night as we were getting ready for bed, I broke down and told him about the kitten. I hadn’t told him before because I didn’t want her to live in his brain, too. And he said, “Let’s go see if we can find her.” At 10:30 at night. Already in our jammies. I loved him so much right then.
daHubby has been an absolute rock for me in our 12 years together, but a couple of events stand out for me:
When my dad passed away. The funeral home director was a complete and utter fuckwad, messed about with getting his death certificate sent in and also fucked up and the grave liner (concrete, can’t think of what it’s called right now) wasn’t put in. Long story short, not only did daHubby step up and help Mum with all the paperwork and so on, he went after the funeral director and nearly tore him to bits. Needless to say, the day after that the death certificate was being processed and we had it a few days later.
When Mum had to be put into a nursing home, not only did he bust his butt to find the best one around here, he also made it a point to go see her if I couldn’t. When she finally passed away, he was right there the whole time and helped me deal with a lot of the guilt I had over having to put her in a nursing home.
He’s done so much for me—helping me deal with my bipolar disorder, being sick and in pain a lot of the time from the meds, being in the hospital for a week for a blood clot…he’s just an all-round good egg.
My husband has said something to similar effect, that I have helped him to learn to stand up for what he believes in. Sometimes it gets overwhelming when you realize the power of two people who are committed to the same thing… much more powerful than a single person alone. I give him many props for his strength, but I have also come to terms with the truth that I give him strength, too. That is when we are doing our best… when we are so focused on our mutual values that we are a support for one another.
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