The fiftieth anniversary celebration

 

So many people, so many well wishes, so many hugs.  It was an awesome experience: thank you all.  Special thanks to Becky, Brian, Matt, and their families who made it all happen.  People already in Colorado stopped by to make it a special day.  Some people even went out of their way to get to Colorado and make it special too.  I don’t have to keep trying to describe it; one word sums it up; Overwhelming.

 

Matt made a champagne toast; tears all around I’m told.  (I guess I wasn’t looking).  Becky said a few words; okay I’m a little teary too.  Judy spoke and acknowledged how significant all the people there were to our lives.  I had a few thoughts to share.  For those who weren’t there, this is what I said.  (For those who were there, this is what I meant to say):

 

Thank you all for joining our celebration.  Fifty years of marriage.  Judy and me.  This is hard to process; it’s the kind of thing that happens to your parents.

 

It has been an emotional few weeks for us; celebrating the 50 year anniversary of each of the events that led up to our wedding.  Coming home from overseas, my parents meeting the plane at Travis Air Force Base, driving back to Southern California in the DeSoto, reuniting with Judy.

 

I think back to the years before our wedding that Judy and I waited until we were old enough to get married; the recurring theme of having to take her home at some point every night and let her go; longing for the time we could end each day going to sleep together and waking up together still the next morning.  We waited four years for that, but we’ve celebrated it every day since.

 

 

Fifty years.  Let me say something about lessons learned over all this time; one lesson in particular going back to when we first got married.  As young newlyweds, it was not uncommon for people to ask how long we had been married.  We would answer “one month”, and the response would be “One month; that’s the easy part. Wait until you’ve been married two months.”

 

As time went by, we would answer “One year”, and the response would be “That’s the easy part.  Wait until you’ve been married two.”  There was a pattern.

 

We didn’t get it then, but we get it now.  At some point, marriage just wears you down.  These first fifty years?  They’ve been the easy part; the fun part.  We’ll have to get back to you on how the next fifty work out.