Who's Gonna Know But Me

There’s an old song country music song (“old” meaning from 1994) that my dad and I both liked.  It was a song by Kathy Mattea called “Who’s Gonna Know.”  If I remember correctly, the song was written by Mattea’s husband, and he wrote it after watching his wife and her siblings laughing and interacting at a get-together.  Mattea’s husband, an only child, watched in both joy and some sadness at how his wife and her family loved, laughed and shared memories together.  He knew that someday, when both his parents were deceased, he would have nobody to share their family memories with.

On the eve of my marriage to Mark, I am reflective.  I am always reflective, but tonight more so.  As I have expressed many times, I have a huge fear of loss; now more than ever.  When it comes to Mike, I have been embattled with the fear of losing our memories.  The memories I fear losing aren’t necessarily the typical ones: What was our wedding day like?  What did we do and see on our trip to Ireland?  How did it feeling taking a trip to Bermuda with the entire family?  Those memories are fairly easy to recall and keep sharp.  It’s the “small memories” -- the ones only Mike and I shared and knew about -- that I fear losing.  Our inside jokes.  A memorable late-night conversation before falling asleep.  An epiphany about personal growth that we came to together.  A feeling or experience we discussed.  A special secret we shared.  We had a language that only we understood.  We could convey a thought with just a look, and only we knew what it meant.  It’s those memories that can’t be triggered by looking at a photograph, or recalled by reminiscing with family and friends.  These are the most sacred of all memories with a spouse, and yet they are the easiest to lose when one half
of the couple is gone.

I have feared being the sole keeper of these most precious memories.  That’s a big job.  It has overwhelmed me at times.  It has worried me to the point of panic.  While I always love hearing others share Mike stories, it’s the Mike stories that just belonged to the two of us that I fear losing the most.  I am the sole keeper of the flame.

In January 2010, when Mike nearly died from pneumonia, he was spooked to the point of keeping
a journal, secretly and written specifically to me only, for one year.  He gave me the journal as my Christmas gift at the end of that year.  It is the most treasured thing I have from him.  While the notebook contains his private thoughts to me, I will share what he wrote on page one: He said he hoped and planned for us living a long life together, and one day being able to read the journal together and laugh.  But if that didn’t happen, and he wasn’t here to grow old with me, he wanted the journal to serve as his memories to me.  I tearfully read the journal when he first gave it to me.  I haven’t yet been able to read it since. 

After Mike passed, and my panic of forgetting things began to set in, I also wanted to keep a journal written only to him, even though he wouldn’t get to read it.  I frequently penned the thoughts as they came to me.  The notes consisted of all the memories that only we shared, which I wanted forever logged so my brain could be released from the pressure of constantly replaying them in order to keep them fresh.  I carried the notes around forever, and in fact, I didn’t actually start putting them in journal form until within the last year.  Once again, Mark respected my need to do this, and understood why I had procrastinated with it for so long.  Now, the notebook is complete, and if a specific memory comes to me on a given day, I know I can pull out the journal and jot it down. There, they're safe.

Mark and I are creating our own special memories that are just shared by us, and we’ll continue to create more.  We will have our own inside jokes and our own secrets.  That’s the beauty of marriage, and thankfully I am in a place where I can once again create memories that are alive and well.