Like you Lon, I have been married twice. The first try did not take, fully. It was amazing and everything I ever wanted at first.
I had married my high school sweetheart at an early age and as we both matured over the following years, things happened that were untoward in keeping with what either of us had promised.
I had promised to stay home more, but live music performance and eventually just the sound company I started had a hold on me that I HAD to follow.
You know when you are playing poker and you feel you have to draw four cards, just to see if you can save your ante? That is how it was after a couple of years. I was drawing four cards at every shuffle.
I had to just allow her to find her own way and after a while things just became untenable. I let my high school sweetheart go.
She was a wonderful woman but I was not in a place to give her what she needed from her prince charming.
She deserved more than a man who was gone all the time building a business.
I went on alone and eventually met my current and for all time wife. We had worked together in photography. Sound jobs were drying up or changing too fast for me to keep up without huge investments.
I took out my cameras and began photographing all my contacts.
I have two album back credits to my name, but most of what I did was promo shots on location, one thing many photographers at the time feared to even try. Hell, I went out to peoples' barns and took shots of real life instances.
Emmy Lou teaching a kid how to milk a cow or Reba fishing Old Hickory in shorts her Daddy would not approve, Dan Seals trying on hats in a place that had never stocked the hat he was looking for, Gatlin war dancing in a rage trying to make his brothers understand why the mix won't sell, etc.
It was all location shots. I sold a few.
I began to make a decent living again. I stuck with it.
I met this art school graduate who was teaching a class on portrait photography. I knew "everything there was to know" about cameras, lighting, composition, but wanted to make people look better in my work.
I signed up for instruction and found my future.
She became my wife, who I have talked about so much lately.
We were so much alike!
On our first real date, we were out to eat and I had one of those Tennessee quart sized iced teas to drink, which she clumsily dumped in my lap after about ten minutes. As embarrassing as it was for her, the incident endeared her to me more than she knew. I have never stood up so fast in my life or since.
Again, she's just like me, a little clumsy at times.
It worked out!
Now, thirty two years later, we're still together with both of us being as clumsy as each moment in time calls for, but together.
She is the smartest person I know and it can be scary how freeking chill she can be in an emergency situation. I thought I was cool under the gun, but she has a second state she enters when the need arises.
I did give up on being gone with the sound reinforcement business and only dabbled a bit since the late '90s. She knows my friends are important to me and I like to help when I can.
I built a lot of big bass cabs in our old garage and she tolerated all of it and just shook her head, "Why would anyone need that kind of thing?"
Live music, baby! Live music.
I had not meant to ramble so far and wide, but I'm leaving it.
Lon, I also have empathy for many friends who have not found a partner, keep trying and keep on not getting there for some reason.
Manny, all is good, here.
We've been warned that her system will take about four to six months to be normal again, all strong and able to fight infections the right way.
So it will require diligence to keep things going the right direction.
If there is anything good to say about Covid it might be that we have been in a mode where sanitizing the entire house constantly gave us a warmer upper for what comes next for us.
Anyone who has ever succumbed to toxic shock or septic shock (both deadly without severe interventional medical measures. It means that a bacterial infection has entered the bloodstream and can now affect every organ in the body - even her heart and lungs were at risk during the worst of it) will be susceptible to a relapse for several years.
Another public service announcement portion, here:
I have been using a BP monitor for my own health for about ten years due to mine being extremely high without medication. Bad news for this old dawg, but manageable.
After seeing how we could not break her fever, I should have taken her BP, which was dropping rather severely and I did not know.
Most of us are not doctors, but put this info in your bag of tricks in case you have a family member with fever for two days.
The infection from her kidneys had begun to compromise her heart muscle function.
Just another heads up guys about how fast these things can go way wrong.
We are good for now and no fever. She is getting tired of me wanting to check it everyday!