Married! And Boy, Was I Wrong!!

Grandson Hudson's artistic depiction of our wedding

I was wrong and I have no problem admitting it. I truly thought that getting married wouldn't make things any different between Sheila & me. More about this later, but, I was wrong ...

It was a nearly ... no, not nearly ... it WAS a perfect day in every possible way. Miramar Beach, Florida is as close to beach perfection as it can possibly be with beautiful white sand beaches, almost transparent water, and a general "kick back & relax" atmosphere. Shauna, James & the kids were there, as were Bruce and Linda along with Laura & Lord who traveled down from NYC. The weather couldn't have been any more perfect, temps in the high '70's at 6:00 pm and another fantastic sunset underway.

And Sheila, looking happy and beautiful, with tears in her eyes the entire time, joined me in making a commitment to a lifetime together! It was a small service, just 11 people, and just the way we wanted it. The focus was on the moment, not encumbered by any need to entertain a large crowd or worry about catering or photographers or live music. We really wanted to enjoy the ceremony and not have to get stuck in "coordination mode".

The wedding party, l to r:
Bruce. Linda, Carter, me, Sheila, Audrey, James, Hudson, Shauna Laura, Lord

Lord is an ordained minister and performed the service for us. It was really comforting to have a family member "in charge" of the actual ceremony, knowing that he would keep us on track ... he did a wonderful job!  Carter handled the photography for us (Carter is a great photographer, videographer and vlogger), and Sheila is so happy that her grandson was able to be such a big part of the event.

Sheila, still beautiful even when wind blasted

The wind decided to kick it up a notch just before the ceremony started. Some creative positioning allowed for generally great poses, and even those that were a bit wind blown came out great! For some reason, the beach was not loaded with semi-naked swimmers so the pictures don’t need a lot of photo-shopping. Truthfully, neither of us noticed anything other than each other and the ceremony itself ... it was cool to watch a video of the ceremony and see what was going on around us.

The day was perfect, the ceremony was perfect, Sheila was perfect, even I was perfect (for a change) (hey, even a broken clock shows the right time at least once a day) and our wedding was simply beautiful in every way! Surrounded by people we love, sharing our joy with them just as they shared our sorrows with us when we lost Frank and Bunny, vowing to honor each other as we start our brand new life together, we couldn't ask for a better start to our marriage!

I said at the start of this post that I was wrong, that I didn't think marriage would change anything between us, and I meant it. I never expected to be even more in love with Sheila than I am, yet now, a few days after the wedding, I do love her more. I never expected to be more proud of her, yet here I am, busting with pride over the fact that the wonderful soul is my wife. I never expected the emotional "tears in my eyes" to continue to well up at the thought that this beautiful woman was willing to make the lifetime commitment to stay with me forever. I never expected to feel differently after the vows, but I do.

Our "unofficial"official wedding pic

This is also, in many ways, the end of this part of the story. What started out as a blog dedicated to the memory of one deeply rooted spirit has evolved into the unveiling of another vibrant force in my life, injecting even more meaning and love into my soul than I ever thought possible. And I thank you all, truly, from the bottom of my heart for allowing me to share this life evolution with you. I never expected to have so many people reading this blog and I'm humbled by the many kind words you have given me.

Of course, being the Jersey-bred blabbermouth that I am, the writing will continue. I am in the process of converting the blog over to a new/larger/better hosting service which will allow for expanded coverage and more content. I expect this to take a few weeks as I sort out how to get that done, but I promise to keep you all updated with my progress. For those that subscribe to the blog, you'll be sent the new information as soon as it is finalized. For those that receive the information via various social media services, you should be able to continue to view the blog in the same manner as you have up to this date.

If you want to be sure to stay linked to the blog, please feel free to send an email to me at egbassga@gmail.com with the word "subscribe" in the title ... we'll be sure to keep you updated.

Sheila and I both thank you all for your amazing support!

Almost Married!!

 

Sheila, contemplating

Getting very, very close now ... just two short weeks away from being married to this beautiful woman and I can't wait to have it become official! Not that anything particularly unusual will take place after we're married, nor do I expect any unusual stuff to suddenly crop up. Pretty much everything we have/know/do as individuals the other person already has/knows/does as well, so we're not anticipating some sudden awakening.

"So, why the big deal with getting married?", a question posed to me by a musician friend last week. He was trying to figure why, after we both had divorces and have both been widowed, why would we feel the need to be married? It's a legitimate question, particularly coming from someone who has not had the good fortune to have had a successful relationship come to fruition. Despite our early individual marriage stumbles, both Sheila and I had good, positive, loving experiences with our deceased spouses.

Home

Nope, we don't need materialistic things from each other; we're both able to get along on our own, although if truth be told it will be a bit easier when we combine our resources. But money and possessions are absolutely NOT a driver in our decision to become "legal"; we could both be quite self-sufficient. The one thing that will be somewhat unbalanced is my encroaching on Sheila's home (we had considered keeping my Jersey house as a "vacation" home, but that whole idea was too preposterous to be actually considered) (one does not have a vacation home in Central Jersey if it's not at the Shore), but over the past year I have junked this place up enough with my own stuff so it actually FEELS like it's my home ... Sheila frequently wonders how she lost control of her own home, but she's willing to make that sacrifice.

I bought a pretty expensive "fancy" car kind of early on in our 'living together" arrangement ... at first it was my car, but now it's just the "big car" (as compared to her "little car") (embarrassingly, both of them are from Lexus) (but the little one is 10 years old) and Sheila drives it as much as I do. And pretty early on I started paying for the routine household expenses and maintenance, so it has sort of morphed into a "we" arrangement with most of our possessions. So, no reason to get married because of material gain on either of our parts.

I can, and do, help out around the house a lot. I do most of the shopping, meal planning and preparation, primarily because Sheila still works. She is the far superior cook, but I'm enjoying the learning process and every now and then I kind of surprise both of us with a pretty darn good meal. When it comes down to crunch time for meal preparation for guests or a party, Sheila is totally in charge and I'm just the assistant. And household tasks like cleaning and minor maintenance kind of get split up between us ... we do our laundry separately, but mostly because Sheila has pretty things that I could destroy in a wash if co-mingled with my nasty's, so better safe than sorry. 

My Georgia family

Sheila has a large, beautiful family within 30 minutes of our home. Actually, daughter Shauna and family (SIL James and three grandkids) live RIGHT-ACROSS-THE-STREET from us (caps accentuated not due to any kind of problem, but accentuated due to the coolness of it all) (seriously), which is all kinds of great by itself. Had I stayed in Jersey, I have a really large (really large) (really) family up there, plus Laura (my beautiful daughter for those who don't typically read this blog) lives in Jersey. So neither one of us NEEDED to be married to prevent becoming hermits.

Now, let's see where we are:

• It's not because of money
• It's not because of possessions
• It's not because of chores/tasks
• It's not because of loneliness

Hmm, what's left? Could it be love?

Yup, that's it, plain and simple ... good old happy, goofy, romantic, funny, joyful, supportive, emotional-lean-on-the-shoulder love. One of the big benefits of getting older is that you have already sorted through all of the B.S. with relationships and you can tell the difference between infatuation, a fling, casual dating, looking for company, and actually being in love! 

Yes, we're positive that ALL of our family and friends thought we were full-blown nuts when we began getting super serious, super fast after our spouses died within 2 weeks of each other. And we can understand how odd that might have seemed at the time, and why so many would question the motives involved here. But now, well over a year later and on the verge of getting married, we're guessing everyone who really knows us can fully understand why we are doing what we're doing.

Sheila edits all of my posts before they get onto the blog, that's one of the reasons this gaggle of words even makes any sense at all. When reviewing this posting, Sheila offered this comment; "I want to be married to you because I want to be a single unit, one entity, with you." That concise statement is perfect, we want to be united, to be fully together. We don't want to be married for the sake of marriage. When our worlds fell apart in the Spring of 2016, neither one of us ever thought we would be married again. 

I don't want to call Sheila my "girlfriend" or my "significant other" or my "partner" or any of the other polite titles people bestow upon unmarried people living together. While Sheila is ALL of those things, I can't wait until she is my wife. Perhaps it's the sense of legitimacy that the noun "wife" imposes, or maybe even the sense of "pride of ownership" (sorry, I know that probably sounds crude but I hope you know what I mean) I feel when I'm with her ... I am crazy proud of her in so many ways ... that makes marriage so important to me/us (BTW, all of that applies to Sheila as well since she feels exactly the same way).

Or maybe we're just old-fashioned, but being married is important to both of us. And it's the real deal, this marriage we're planning, something that will be permanent and loving and important to us until the end of time. We're having a very small ceremony with some family only, no big splashy event or big hoopla, just a simple ceremony on the beach at sunset surrounded by people we love.

On September 19th Sheila and I will be united and become one single unit, one entity. I can't wait to be married to Sheila, and the next time I write we will be together forever!