I’ve been sorting through decades of old family photos this week. And I’m finding my husband all over the place: Jon the young, long-haired news editor. Jon the bridegroom in the three-piece wedding suit. Jon the dad with a toddler slung over his shoulder. Jon the middle-aged techie bent over a keyboard. I love all those Jons. But now that I’m widowed, it’s Jon the old guy that I miss the most.
The Rascally Guy With the Curly Moustache
Don’t get me wrong, I still appreciate the young Jon, the rascally guy with the curly moustache and the scraggly hair down to his shoulders, the Jon who was thirty years old on the day we met.
I also still like the Jon I married, the one who, unlike so many twenty-first-century bridegrooms, would rather not participate in the wedding planning. “Do it however you want,” Jon told me. “I’ll be there.”
And I still like Jon the dad, who wasted no time finding his way into fatherhood, getting up at 2:00 a.m. the first week of Peter’s life with us to feed the tiny newborn.
I like all those guys, but it’s the old guy, the seventy-something Jon, the guy who was right there next to me all those years that I miss the most.
Why is that?
Till Death Do Us Part
Let’s be honest. When you are young and you are asked to say the words “till death do us part,” you don’t really mean it.
First of all, you don’t think death is going to come your way, ever. That’s a feature of being young — death is for old people, and old age isn’t going to happen to you, because you’re young.
And second of all, in the back of your mind, you think, “Eh, I dunno. Maybe I’ll change my mind in twenty years, get a different spouse. A better one maybe.”
You don’t exactly say your wedding vows with your fingers crossed, but you do find it pretty hard to know how you’re going to feel about this person down the line, when you’re both 50 years old and wrinkling up.
But! Now that some years have slipped your grip and even your fiftieth birthday is a thing of the past, now that you are pushing 80 (and 90 is not so far off either), and now that you are a card-carrying, seventy-something old person — it becomes feasible to actually commit.
You’ve got at best only a decade or two ahead of you. And you can picture those few remaining years parked alongside this other person, the one who’s getting wrinkles in places you didn’t know could get wrinkles.
Widowed Now, It’s Jon the Old Guy I Miss the Most
Yes, till death do us part actually seems doable now. The time commitment can be visualized — it’s a little more (probably) than the one-year pledge you just made to your local PBS station, but it’s a lot less than the 30-year mortgage you took out back when you were still immortal.
And so, it’s that committed Jon that I miss the most. The settled Jon. But also the committed me, the settled me. I miss those two seventy-something Newhalls whose grass was now greenest on our side of the fence — two people who planned to stick together till death did us part.
And that’s the reason (one of them) that those last years with Jon the old guy were the best of all my years on this planet.
Love the One Who’s Already There
Right around the time Jon and I met, Stephen Sills came out with a song entitled “Love the One You’re With.”
I noticed that song when it first came out. It knew it was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t figure out what. I get it now, finally.
What a great photo of daughter. And the last photo made me happy but a little heartsick. I so wish I could come visit and play chess with Uncle Jon.
He would have loved to sit down and play a game with just you. His chess board is still there on his desk.
A beautiful piece, Barbara. So nice to see these photos too. Grandchild No. 1 was just asking us to hang some photos of Jon in the house…I’ll have to get working on that.
So sweet to know that somebody who meant a lot to Jon is remembering him.
Good reminder, Barbara, for those of us who still have our dear husbands!!! Thanks. Anyway, I like looking at pictures of Jon, too 🙂
Yes, say something nice to that dear husband today. And again tomorrow.
Barbara, thanks for this thoughtful and utterly truthful riff. It’s right on.
Ah, interesting to have an (old) guy’s point of view here!
another moving essay. thank you.
Thank you, Ginger!
Love this piece, Barbara . . . the flow of stages of your lives together . . . new photos I hadn’t seen of Jon. So glad you have photos of your life together along the way!
There are lots more photos of Jon where those came from, Cheryl. He didn’t mind being photographed, and he didn’t mind me taking pictures when he wasn’t looking. Same goes for all the columns and blog posts I wrote about him over the years. That says something about his character, but I’m not sure what!
Spot on. Thanks again for your heart warming thoughts about your lives together.
We were so lucky to have had them most of our adult lives. They were rare men, both.
Yes. Lucky to have them with us at all those different phases of our lives.