Jimmy Durante had it all wrong...please DON'T build your world around me. 

I am coming down with a cold so I am indulging in a day of staying in my pajamas, cuddled in my easy chair with a cup of hot echinacea tea and the tv remote. I just finished watching "Sleepless in Seattle", one of my favorite movies.  You can't beat the scene where the woman is tearfully describing "An Affair to Remember" and the guys compare it to "The Dirty Dozen".  (If you haven't seen the movie, you should....if only for that scene.) Meg Ryan's overacting and broad gestures drive me crazy, and the premise of love-at-first-sight is a little sticky and overly romantic for me, but overall the movie is cute and good-natured.  A nice movie to watch on a sick-with-a-cold-and-staying-in-my-pajamas kind of day.

Sorry - I digress.

At the end of the movie, the music over the end credits is Jimmy Durante singing "Make Someone Happy."  Overall, I like the song. It is an easy tune to hum along with, and I can't argue with most of the words. They encourage us to make someone happy and warn us that fame comes and goes quickly but love is real. Anything that encourages us to be kind to each other and to value love and humanity over fame and fortune is ok with me.  However, the end of the song is "build your world around her....never let her go."

Maybe I am just a little jaded, but I had to cringe when I heard those words. That seems very dangerous to me, to build my world around another human being.  I'll certainly share my life with someone deserving - once I am convinced that he is deserving.  And I'll share all my worldly possessions with one who will treat them with the respect they deserve, after I did all that work to earn them!  But it seems dangerous to build my entire life on a foundation as fickle, as unpredictable and as temporary as a human life.

Two friends of mine had terrible losses in the past year. Both were happy marriages and their ends were totally unplanned and unexpected, and left them single at an unfairly young age. Both of these fine women have to rebuild their lives without the love and support of a life mate, a partner, a spouse.  Both have to face the high school and college graduations of their kids without a spouse. Both have to make a sudden change in their employment and figure out how to build a retirement fund by themselves.

Deb was happily married to a stable and kind-hearted man for more than 20 years. They raised his son from a previous marriage together; they had a beautiful daughter together; they built a successful business together. And something I respected about their partnership was their openness to couples work and therapy. They often attended couples workshops and supported each other completely and unconditionally as they pursued individual therapy for their own childhood issues (both are children of alcoholics.)  Shortly after one of their most productive couples workshops, where they worked on some intimacy issues and started to discuss the family changes upcoming with their daughter's high school graduation, Deb's husband suddenly announced to her "I'm done with this marriage and I'm leaving you."  He already had a nearby townhouse rented and partially furnished, so this was a move he had been planning even before the 'successful' couples workshop.

Deb was, of course, completely blindsided and devastated, as were all their friends and family. She has worked part-time for 20 years as the business manager of their company. Now she suddenly needs to find a full-time job, a smaller place to live and learn how to trust humanity again after such a devastating loss. She is in the men-are-pigs-and-totally-selfish-sexually-obsessed-beings phase, so I haven't even asked if she is considering dating.

Linda is a totally different scenario. She had been married to Mark, her college sweetheart, for nearly 30 years. They had been all over the world together and had two beautiful children. Their marriage was beautiful. He often spoke glowingly about her and was obviously still enamored of her after those many years. She adored him and was very proud of his professional accomplishments, as well as his devotion to their kids. 

Then he started having strange headaches. After many medical tests and a few scary doctor visits, they got the bad news: cancer.  And a bad one that had already spread throughout his body. After a powerful round of chemotherapy, he succumbed to a bout of pneumonia.  Linda, like Deb, was blindsided and devastated.  Mark had been an officer in the military and kept himself in prime physical condition. He had never done drugs, drank to excess or smoked. They lived a healthy life in every way. Why was he taken so young and so unexpectedly?  She, too, is now needing to reconsider her career, her retirement plans, the plans to put both their kids through college. She is in the how-can-God-do-this-to-a-good-person-like-Mark brokenhearted and griefstricken phase, so we do a lot of crying when we get together.

And this loss doesn't just happen to women. A co-worker of mine, Warren, had been married for nearly 40 years to the same woman. They were carefully planning for retirement together within 5 years. They had a daughter together and kept in close touch with her as she started her career in Atlanta.  Then both Warren and his wife were laid off in the same week. His wife was so devastated by this turn of events that she took her own life. Now, Warren was left with no job, no wife and all their previous plans gone. All within 2 weeks. I don't know how he is getting through each day with such devastating changes. From time to time, I will notice that he is very quiet and withdrawn.  When I ask him what's on his mind, he will share that 'today was Helen's birthday', or 'today is our wedding anniversary'.  The farthest ahead that he plans anything is what frozen dinner he'll put in the microwave when he gets home that night and falls asleep in his easy chair.

I don't mean to be so depressing. I know most people don't go through such life-altering upheaval. But I am very wary of building my whole life around someone who can leave by choice (as Deb's and my husband did) or by illness (as Mark did) or by suicide (as Helen did.)  And I am not totally down on marriage either. I hope someday to find someone I can give myself to in such a total and trusting way. 

But I can't let my identity or my future happiness depend solely on having that person next to me. I look forward to sharing life experiences, happy times, troubled times, wealth and loss with someone someday. And, for the right person, I will put on a wedding dress, walk down the aisle and say "till death do us part" with them.  But I need to know that the happy times won't end if that person leaves before I am ready. I need to have other things in my life that can sustain me and fulfill me, and I would hope that he would have other things to sustain him if I should choose to leave or be struck ill somehow.

Share my life....yes, I hope to someday. Fall in love....gosh, yes. I want that again.  Build everything on that one person, trusting that they won't change, won't die, won't leave me by their own choice or by an act of God?  Nope.  Can't do it.