Happy Birthday, Marilyn

Tomorrow, September 16, would have been my wife Marilyn's 70th birthday.  It is yet another of those dreaded "firsts" that we all must face after the loss of a Loved One, someone who meant so much to you.  I couldn't let this occasion pass without making mention of it in this space, but what to say?

Earlier this year, I was part of a support group for people who had lost a loved one to cancer.  At the end of the ten session program, we were asked to respond to these topics for a commerative program:

• Tell us a little about your Loved One
• Favorite memory

So I did, and I thought that the best way to observe the milestone birthday that she never got to see, was to share what I wrote at the end of that group support program.

Happy Birthday, Marilyn.  We will always celebrate your birthday and you.

MARILYN SPROULE

Tell us a little about your loved one.....Marilyn was bright and lively, smart, caring, and perhaps the most compassionate person that I have ever known.  The last person that she ever wanted to talk about was herself.   When someone would ask her how she was doing or what she had been up to, she had a knack for turning the question around and asking about how HE or She was doing and what HE or SHE had been up to lately.  When she died, many people would come to me and say, "I didn't even realize that she had been ill."  She never wanted her illness to define her.  To the very end, all she cared about was making sure that everyone else who loved her would be okay after she was gone.

She was pretty, she was funny, she was a wonderful lover, and my best friend.  She lit up every room that she ever entered.   She could throw a dinner party, a 4th of July cookout, or a Christmas Brunch that would make Martha Stewart envious, and our home looked like a Pottery Barn catalog, yet it was the warmest and friendliest home that you ever visited.  She made me laugh, or at least smile broadly, every single day, and THAT may have been the very best part of our 47 years together.  I still cannot believe that she is gone.

Favorite memory....Marilyn and I met in college in 1972.  We were married in 1974.  How can you have one, single favorite memory of almost fifty years of being together?  I suppose that her vary favorite times were our annual trips to North Carolina's Outer Banks with her extended family.  We made those trips for over thirty-five years.  Due to COVID, there was no trip in 2020, but we got back there in 2021, and Marilyn was determined to be a part of that trip.  She felt good, looked good, and we had a wonderful vacation, but I suspect that she knew that this was to be her last trip with me and her family, her last trip to the ocean and the beach that she loved so much.  I am so, so grateful that we made that trip.

There were also all the trips that we made together, just the two of us:  New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware, and Hilton Head Island beaches, Hawaii and Florida, and Las Vegas for her 50th birthday, a train trip to Chicago to see "Hamilton", Cooperstown, NY and so many others.  And in later years with our friends Susan and Dan to Florida, France, Great Britain, and Las Vegas.  Baseball games and football games and basketball games, and movies and plays, and dinner dates.

Then there is a memory of building a life together.  The excitement of moving into our first house in 1979 and subsequent moves in 1986 and 2010 and making each of those houses our own and the wonderful touches of hers that made them so special, that made them a home.

My favorite memory? The long and continuous fifty year ride together.