When your person dies people tend to avoid reminiscing about you as a couple. As one of my clients said, you become the keeper of memories. Unfortunately, if the memories are not refreshed, shared or written down there is a tendency for them to fade.
My calendar kindly reminded me this week that it was 13 years since my husband and I got engaged. So, I’m going to tell you our engagement story. It’s not particularly elaborate or unusual, but it is our story.
It was a Sunday morning and the clocks had fallen back so we had inadvertently woken up particularly early. I was somehow persuaded to get up and go for a walk by the river where I grew up. We parked our car at my family house but had the insight not to wake everyone up and set off along the river path. I knew something was up and I thought he was going to propose. I doubt he would have got me out of bed otherwise!
At that stage we had been together for 6 years and marriage had never been particularly high up my priorities. We had bought a house together and I felt that was almost more of a commitment to each other. It was only as we started to consider having children together that I realised I’d prefer to have to the same surname as any children. He had proposed a few times, but always relatively jokingly so I’d never taken them too seriously.
In my anti marriage days I had always told him that he would need to ask for my father’s permission. He knew this was merely an obstacle for him to tackle to test his mettle, rather than the response or symbolism mattering to me. In fact, now I think about it and dredge up the memory, I remember overhearing him ask my father for his permission to ask me to marry him. It was late at night around fire in a wet field in Wales at a relatives wedding. I remember chuckling as my father gave his blessing, whilst making it abundantly clear that they both knew his opinion would be irrelevant.
Maybe that’s how I knew when he bounced out of bed and wanted to go on one of our favourite walks. I didn’t want to spoil it, so I played along. I remember we were walking very slowly as he was almost limping. I’d later learn he had put the ring box in his sock so that I wouldn’t find it and then was trying to ensure it wouldn’t fall out. He managed to time it so that we were alone on the footpath and we stopped by a statue marking the original meridian line.
He went down onto one knee and I remember asking him why he was kneeling in a puddle and laughing. Fortunately, we recovered the moment and some beautiful words were said by both of us. The ring had survived the journey and was truly beautiful. I remember feeling very happy that we were going to get to spend the rest of our lives together. How little did I know how short his life would be. We wandered on into town and had a coffee by the river before returning to my family home at a more respectable time to break the good news.
My husband was a fantastic storyteller and a total performer. I can guarantee he would have told the story of our proposal better, but he’s not here to do that. I have inadvertently become the keeper of our memories and so I will tell the stories rather than forget them completely. What stories do you have that are starting to fade?
