And Life Comes Back: A Wife's Story of Love, Loss, and Hope Reclaimed (13 page)

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” the host announced into the microphone, “for our last round each of these gentlemen will have a chance to show his wife how much he loves her. Let’s bring a chair out onto the dance floor, please.” His glittery assistant brought a chair to the floor with grandiose flair. The newlyweds went first.

He seated his bride in the chair, and the host asked him, “Tell me, sir, do you love your wife?”

“Yes, I do.” Bless his heart, he was so nervous he was twisting his brand-new, shiny gold wedding band.

“How much do you love her?”

“Um, I love her a lot.”

“Have you ever danced for her?” The host taunted the young groom.

“Um, no.”

“Well, today is your day to show your wife—and everyone in this room—how much you love her. When the music starts, you have forty-five seconds to show her what you’ve got.”

The music blared, and he performed the most benign, prudish dance. Very precious and respectful but not very entertaining for the
hungry crowd. He pirouetted around her chair, lightly touching her shoulders, and I believe he perhaps loosened his tie. Maybe he undid the top button of his shirt. Maybe.

Meanwhile, as Robb and I stood off to the side watching, waiting for our turn, I wondered how on earth Robb intended to handle this spotlight. Little did I know, he had taken off his belt and loosened his pants in preparation for the most public display of our marriage.

The crowd clapped and gave a few hoots to the young couple as they took their place at the side of the dance floor, the groom buttoning his shirt and fastening his tie. They were the picture of decorum. The host gestured grandly to us, pointing to the final contestants of the night. With the host’s introduction, Robb whispered to me, “No shame, no regrets,” and before I could question just what he meant, Robb swept me onto the dance floor and into the chair reserved for me. His eye contact was potent, palpable.

“Sir, do you love your wife?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, I love my wife.”

“How much do you love your wife?”

“José, you have no idea how much I love my wife. I will tell the world tonight.” The crowd cheered and whooped. I blushed.

“Have you ever danced for her?” (No, he hadn’t.)

“I’m about to. Gentlemen, let me show you how it’s done.”

The host stepped away as the music blared through the ballroom, and Robb tore his shirt off and threw it into the crowd. He thrust his pelvis toward me until his pants fell to the ground, and then he tossed those too into the crowd. Now, in a room of a hundred people, he stood in his white briefs, thrusting and strutting, a wild man with no
boundaries. The whole time he maintained potent eye contact with me—as if either of us could pretend we were alone in the room. Camera flashes lit up the place. People held their smartphones high as they recorded the whole episode. My husband, a corporate trainer for a national insurance company, had abandoned every scruple, every ounce of dignity, and every bit of his pride, all to show me, like never before, how much he loved me.

When the music stopped, the crowd was cheering wildly—and the host leaned in to say to us, “I have never, ever seen anything like that before in all my years here.” Robb felt a little less confident now, with the music off and the house lights on, as he gathered his shirt, his belt, and his pants, and dressed again in front of all these people for whom he’d stripped.

“Wow! And what do you think of all this?” The host held the microphone to me, awaiting my response. But I could only laugh and laugh and laugh. My thoughts popped like balloons:
What just happened? Was Robb in his underwear? in front of these people? Who is this man I married? Is this going to be on YouTube?

We won the newlywed game. And for our grand prize, the host presented us with a sixty-four-ounce bottle of tequila, which suited us as well as anything after such absurdity in the name of wedding vows. With cheers and taunts from the crowd, we bowed, gathered our prize tequila, and once more took our place in the game of cards at the corner table. “Now, where were we?”

In his spontaneous moment of anonymous glory, Robb had forgotten that we would share this resort with the audience for another eight days. He became wildly famous among the sea of tourists; they
cheered for him on the beach, offered their table to us at the bar, and gave standing ovations when we entered the dining room. He was woefully embarrassed, longing to return to his low profile. As we dressed for breakfast one morning, he said, “I think I’ll wear this T-shirt so they won’t remember me.”

“Hey, babe,” I offered, “I don’t think it’s your shirt they remember.”

Oh, that sweet man. Indeed, he showed the world that night how much he loved his wife, but it had less to do with the striptease and memorable dancing. In an off-the-charts creative way, he had shown me, “Baby girl, there’s no limit to what I’ll do for you. If the world asks how much I love you, I’ll show them, sparing nothing.”

Six months later he is gone. And on the shelf in my pantry is an unopened sixty-four-ounce bottle of Mexican tequila. Proof that it happened. All of it.

No shame, no regrets.

Ungratefulness creeps in silently. It masks itself as a helpful critic, one who sees quickly how things might be changed or improved, rather than finding joy and thankfulness for the way things are. A few years ago, after we had been married for seven or eight years, I came to terms with an ugliness in me: that root of ungratefulness.

I needed to change my thinking; I needed a new discipline. I bought a new journal, and I began to list things I was thankful for. I chose one particular genre: Robb.

For two years I wrote something each day. I claimed something to
be thankful for, a reason to smile over him. This discipline proved especially effective and particularly challenging during our rough days of disconnectedness, our harder seasons of living parallel instead of unified. I began writing, one page at a time, until it was complete. Here are some pages from the journal.

I wrapped the journal with glittery paper and wire-edged ribbon. I gave it to him in Mexico, on our second honeymoon. He sat down in a cushy chair in our hotel suite and read it all in one sitting, even though he hated books.

If I had waited six months longer, he never would have known. He never would have seen my words, known that I noticed. I gave it to him just in time. And now that journal of gratitude is mine again, to keep forever.

Robb traveled about 40 percent of the time for business, and his reentry was a four-day process every time he came home.

Day 1: Sweet Honeymoon. Daddy is home! Hooray, hooray!

Day 2: The Tired Day. He’s tired from traveling, I’m tired of him traveling, and we say very little in our exhaustion.

Day 3: The Fighting Day. The worst day of the cycle. He shifted from “Traveling Dad” to “Man of the House.” I shifted from “Mommy in Charge” to “Your Dad and I Will Talk About It.” With more Type A in his personality, he could run a tight ship. The boys and I relaxed the routines while he was gone. Suddenly he came home and upturned all our routines. Without saying so, we spent a solid day resisting each other.

Day 4: Back in Step. On the fourth day Robb and I could start to
see eye to eye once more, and we could reassimilate into the well-established roles, albeit with a degree of reluctant tolerance. This was the day that gave me hope we could survive, because the previous two days were always, always, always a mess. If we could make it to the fourth day, we were over the hump.

The red flags flew when he had back-to-back business trips with only two or three days in between. We only made it to the Tired Day or the Fighting Day. We didn’t make it to Back in Step before he was suddenly gone again, often to return four days later—still for only two or three days. We hit some serious bumps when we didn’t have the full four days to find each other again.

The boys and I adapted to life without him for those few days because what else could we do? We couldn’t sit at home and wait for him to come back, tearfully putting our plans on hold until his flight landed. So we continued with meals, play dates, and daily outings, just the three of us. It seemed that the hardest thing about having a traveling husband wasn’t that he was gone so much; it was that I got used to it. In fact, I got good at it, and that felt unsettling.

On one Saturday morning we were on Day 3 of the reentry cycle, and it was ugly. As I often did, I had fallen prey to my unrealistic, serendipitous ideas for the weekend—that we would all reunite and go for a bike ride, toting a picnic basket and a red gingham tablecloth, and we would laugh and talk the afternoon away with meaningful, memorable conversation. Equally so, Robb fell prey to the satisfaction of the Saturday to-do list. He was in task mode, crossing out as many things as possible on his list.

His love language was acts of service; mine is quality time. These two clashed often. He loved me well by staying busy on my behalf and requesting my selfless teamwork, and I wanted him to sit down and talk to me, to bare his vulnerable, weary soul. Neither was happening. For sure not on the Fighting Day.

Yes, it made more sense to clean the bathrooms and rake the mulch on a Saturday since it was unlikely (pretty much count on
no
) that I would do it during the week by myself. He couldn’t rest until things were tidy and in order, so there was no quality time in our future until his list was complete. I conceded but not with a happy heart. I took the passive-aggressive approach, slamming pots, pans, and cupboard doors. He ignored me well. The firm set to his jaw was my only indication that he noticed my fury at all.

As he passed through the kitchen, rake in hand, I hissed, “You let me know when you’re ready to talk to me.” Now that’s an invitation for a positive conversation if I’ve ever heard one.

“Oh, Tricia. What. What! What?”

“We don’t talk anymore. Do you realize that?”

Even as I said it, I knew I wasn’t doing myself any favors. That wasn’t really an accurate statement, and for all the mental outlining I had done in the previous days, for all the planning I had done to prepare for this interlude between the two of us, I wasn’t speaking the way I wanted to.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Us. This. You. Me. Everything.”

“Okay. Go ahead. Talk.”

“Oh, right. Like I even want to right now.”

“Well, you’re the one who brought it up, so you let me know when you’re ready.”

He had traveled for several weeks in a row, touching down barely long enough to unpack the dirty clothes and load up the clean ones before heading off to another city eager for his expert training. In the same way that I had become used to his absence, he had become accustomed to the corporate world of adult interactions, living on his own, and arranging his ducks in a row—just the way he liked them. During each visit home his mind seemed crowded with reflections on the previous conference and preparations for the one to come. He was detached, critical, and easily angered. He was impatient and short tempered, and it was contagious. Or maybe if I’m honest, it’s perhaps possible that I was the one who set the angry, critical tone for our Fighting Days. Maybe. As I held down the home front with menial tasks, it was easy to envy his trips around the country; his per diem meal budget; his quiet evenings alone, free of tantrums, baths, and interruptions. I did not overflow with grace for him.