Fifty Years Together

Mike McCarville

Fifty years ago today, 19-year-old Ann Ball became Mrs. Mike McCarville.

In the five decades of our togetherness, we’ve shared joy and happiness, sadness and sorrow. We’ve been way up and way down. We’ve been healthy and we’ve been ill.

We have been down the road a time or two and although the road ahead is narrower than the one behind, we rejoice at having reached this golden milestone in our marriage.

A friend, long a bachelor, sent me an email in which he wrote, “You must tell me about 50 years with the same woman.”

All right. I shall.

Fifty years with this special woman has meant the glass I always leave on my nightstand finds its way to the kitchen each morning. The coffee grounds in the coffee maker always get emptied. My razors are always replenished without a word said. Her love is manifest in many ways and her many kindnesses make my feeble attempts minor.

Thoughtfulness and caring are fertilizer to the flower of love. Ann provides and I accept, with gratitude.

Life has not always been grand and I suspect we show each bump in the road, each jarring event, in one way or another.

My Mom and Dad made it 51 years before Dad’s death. Sister Kaye and her husband Dick are at 60 years. Sister Donna and husband Doug are at 63 years.

We, my parents and my sisters and I, have been blessed with lifetime partners.

I would have it no other way; Ann has been my lover, my helpmate, my partner, my nurse, my conscience, my companion, my friend. For all these, and more, I am thankful and forever in her debt.