The Day Jan and I Married!

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes, 58 seconds

Love Never Dies

Today, August 9, 2022, is forty-seven years since Jan and I married. The memories not only of that day but every day and night of our lives are technicolor movies that play on a loop in my mind. As she said in her vows, our love will last as long as “both of us possess life.” I knew before meeting Jan that true love would never die. In the fifteen months, I have lived alone, that truth is more self-evident than ever. 

Our wedding was only one day of thousands, but it was the time and place where we announced our love and commitment to family and friends.

The highest honor of my life was and always will be Jan’s husband.

As her husband, I was her caretaker for the last nineteen months of her life. Until Jan’s final breath, I believed she would live a long and healthy life.

Every day I wake up and ask God why Jan and I could not have had another day, week, or month together.

But I know our love will never die, and Jan will always be with me

I will match all donations made this month to The Jan Lilien Education Fund to honor Jan and the memory of our wedding.

The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. All donations are tax-deductible.


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29 comments add your comment

  1. What a great story as well as funny…You described the wedding as if it happened yesterday!!

    • Hugo, thank you very much for commenting on The Day Jan and I Married.

      In my mind, the day Jan and I married was, in fact, yesterday. It was an essential public statement to family and friends that the love Jan and I shared was not an infatuation but a long-term commitment. Jan’s love transformed me and made me a better person.

      Like life itself, love can be fragile. When I write about our early days, I must accept that our love and marriage might not have happened.

        My commitment to my imaginary girlfriend kept me from pursuing Jan even though I felt a strong and unique attraction to Jan when I met her at the December 1972 VISTA Training.

        Jan could have decided that her parent’s opposition was enough to convince her not to marry me.

        Jan might have had a boyfriend when I went to her party, and I would have only a casual friend.

      If any of those had occurred, I might have been a lifelong bachelor, or perhaps the imaginary girlfriend would not have left me.

      As I wrote, the highest honor of my life was and always will be being Jan’s husband. Love never dies, and my passion for Jan will never end.

      The amateur writing I do comes from my heart and soul and flows thru my fingers like the tides in the Bay of Fundy.

      Hugo, I would write more often if I had more readers like you.

      I appreciate your friendship and support during the most challenging chapter of my life.

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John Fletcher translated the Kindle version.

The Goodreads summary provides an overview,

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, an impoverished widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the Fanta above) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

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The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month are matched dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

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Read: September 2021

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Breathe

by Joyce Carol Oates

Celebrate JanReading Breathe by Joyce Carol Oates was a book I knew I needed to read once Jan was diagnosed. Although the book might trigger negative memories, I finally read Breathe. It was what I needed to read at this point in my journey.

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Still waiting.

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The opening paragraphs set the tone.

A Hand is gripping yours. Warm, dry hand gripping your slippery, humid hand.

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Leaning over you begging you – Breathe!

As one mourning the death of the love of his life, I found several phrases in the book helpful in understanding what I have gone through and will continue to confront.

Among them is grief-vise, which I have written about in this stream.

In the grip of the grief vise, all that you will do, all that you even imagine doing, will require many times more effort.. Hardly daring to breathe for the grief-vise will tighten around your chest, squeezing the very air out of your lungs.

In the early stages of grief, the vise was strangling me. Breathing was impossible, and weeping was constant at times.

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These are some of the other phrases I have found useful and will include in posts.

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  • Never come to the end of kissing.
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  • Shy in the language of intimacy.
  • As if a life lived with strangers could compensate for the emptiness in your heart.
  • No purpose in your life. No compass.

What you love most, that you will lose. The price of your love is your loss.

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When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

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The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



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