How to BE Together for 40 years Without Really Trying or Love the One Your With

Valentine's Day will be upon us in just a month.

Everybody loves Hearts and there are so many ways to create crafty hearts to symbolize the feelings and idea of being in Love.

40 years in a partnership is symbolized by the RUBY gemstone, so perhaps the red ruby heart carries even more meaning when you have lived and worked and laughed and cried and struggled and dreamed with the same person for that length of time...

When we started out on this journey we had no thought or goal or plan to get this far!  When you are 19 years old and your partner only 22, what can be on your mind but LOVE -- and that is LOVE in really big letters.

It surely has not been an easy journey and we never thought it would be, we never thought about it at all, really.  We woke up every morning together and we took care of the things that presented themselves each day.

Sure, we had dreams and plans but we never believed that those things were just my dream or his dream.  We always worked together.  We replicated ourselves in the form of two very satisfactory boys (now, well grown men).  We worked together and believed together.   And we always told people that what he says is what I mean and what I say is what he wants. 

We always stood up for each other.  We always respected each other.  We never called the other one names and we never swore at each other, even in rather heated 'discussions'.  We always figured out a way.   We never gave up on each other, even though there were disappointments, we worked to understand and repair the things we could.

We have always been ONE.

We got married in the front room of this little house at the corner of Dalton St and Mountain Ave in Winnipeg, Manitoba on a bitterly cold day in January.  The 22nd day to be exact.  It was a small wedding in my Mom and Dad's house with only our closest family there to witness.  I wore a short lace dress that cost less than 10 dollars and he wore a brown suit that came from the 2nd hand store.  Our rings came from the jewellery counter in the Woolworth's store downtown on Portage Avenue and were not real gold...

We shared a meal at the Shanghai Restaurant in Winnipeg's Old Downtown that hosted 35 friends and family and cost my dad 96 dollars for the whole thing.

It was the most stressful day of my life!  I can honestly say, I did not particularly enjoy the day.  In fact, I fainted half way through the wedding ceremony.  My Mom thought I was being dramatic!

I was just scared sh*tl#ss!

I cannot say there has been a day in those 40 years that I regretted.

We have come from being teenagers together to being old foggies.

It was an easy thing to do and yet it is something that not everyone can do.  Life treats you how you expect it to and there is no way to stop it from passing by.  You grab what you can, and hold on to what you need and want.

You don't throw things away just cause they get old, you find a new use for it or a way to revamp it or accept it.   I am pretty good at reusing and recycling things, so treating a relationship that way is not so far fetched.

I cannot imagine life without, Chris Barker,  the man I have spent my life with and I would never wish I had a different life.  The best part is there is still time to learn and be more and do more and just be TOGETHER.

Don't ask me how it's done, and don't ask me how you can do it as my only answer is what you have heard many times before.  One step at a time.  It's like making a quilt, I guess, you sew all the pieces together and stitch the layers so they become so knotted together it is impossible to rip it apart and eventually it becomes ONE big thing.