Beloved Wife

Riding home on the bike path earlier this week, a huge grin spread across my face as I pondered the fact that even at my age and with one marriage come and gone, I could still be married to someone for 40 or 50 years. Granted, the size of the grin was in direct proportion to how happy it makes me to be with my current love.

But even if I don't end up married to him, it's huge that it makes me happy to contemplate 40 or 50 years with anyone. I didn't feel that way over a decade ago when I met my first husband, and while that may have been influenced by who he is or what he offered in a long-term partnership, I think the bigger factors were my lack of faith in love between a man and a woman and my own lack of desire to contemplate being on this earth for 40 or 50 years, let alone dealing with someone else for that long.

Yes my friends, that's how my life felt a lot of the time before I waded through all the depression and anxiety that I carried out of my childhood. Heavy. Difficult. Lonely. Encumbered. For the most part, life wasn't something I wanted to think about doing for a long period of time.

Then along came my first child, who showed me immediately a part of myself that wanted desperately to be around as long as possible to be his mother. But I still had to reconcile how difficult life felt with how amazing my love for him was. Along came my second child, and the difficulty just got too big to ignore, so I started a long process of treatment for depression and anxiety that involved a handful of years of medication, therapy, yoga, acupuncture, energy healing, chiropractic and massage. Now I feel pretty damn psyched to greet each day, super fortunate to get to be present to my kids as they grow up, and really hopeful about the next time I tie the knot.

But before all that -- before I met my first husband and experienced just how great the love between a man and a woman can feel, and before my children introduced me to the hugeness of love -- I had some really beautiful, intimate friendships with women. Still do, but in those days, the heaviness I sometimes felt about life sometimes affected my friendships too.

This song always makes me think of one friend in particular. We shared a lot together over the years, including, for a while, a home, a bed (with a dog between us), lots of songs (including this one), and some major decisions of the heart that changed the course of a number of lives. I think of her whenever I hear this song, but now, I also think about being someone's beloved wife for 50 years. And it just feels great that it makes me happy instead of overwhelmed to think about that:

You were the love

For certain of my life

You were simply my beloved wife

I don't know for certain

How I'll live my life

Now alone without my beloved wife

My beloved wife

I can't believe

I've lost the very best of me...