ONCE UPON A TIME

This pool table is in the basement of a house in the next town once belonged to my husband and I as for 2 short years owned the house. Before that it belonged to my husband’s family. The pool table was a home staple in the 1970’s. My parents even had one but in the dining room.

Yet the one above is hard to look at because of memories of the house. Good but mostly bad. We were young and thought we had forever in front of us…..When we moved out I tried to give the table away but the buyers asked to keep it. So we left it.

My husband had a happy life in that house. He must hold those memories true in his heart as he remembers happiness and the true love of his parents to each other and to him and his brother.

So I know the chaos of my upbringing was not the way the world is. Lessons experienced by caring for both of Chuck’s parents as each left this earth still desperately in love with each other. I know that true love does exist. Now I must put aside the hope of unselfish love lasting forever to help him become comfortable with the stage of his life. I thought we were forever and he would care for me until eternity?

This thing, bone marrow cancer, is cruel and painful. His bone marrow is beginning to fail. Next? I don’t believe there is a next, only now by providing him comfort care.

Remember how I once described marriage as 2 pillars with a piece of slate balancing perfectly atop the pair? Can love be stretched far on to one side as needed? Can I hold up the slate alone? What if I cannot…..

The pool table is much like the 2 pillars of love. Pretending it’s still balanced just as we left it. Perhaps I will remember this as how we were? A pool table with the slate top still balanced despite the uneven basement floor on the balanced pillar/legs? Can we play a game of pool again even if one side is causing to table to tilt? With every pool ball falling on the floor can we really still play pool? No. He doesn’t need to know his pillar is crumbling. I will hold his part up just as he has done for me.

Can we forget this table ever existed…..