June 21st…summer…Take your Dog to Work Day…solstice…longest day…shortest night…our anniversary.

Today would have been our 44th anniversary. Instead our lives together stopped at 41. Naturally today my thoughts are focused on the incredible woman who said ‘I Do’ on this day way back in 1975. I believe we owed our happiness together to one thing: Knowing when to compromise and when to not!

The importance of compromise for us actually began at our wedding! On the altar that day, we were being presided over by a priest who was unwilling to compromise. He maintained, and told us to our faces, our marriage was doomed before it even started. Mary Kay knew better and told him so. Then the priest refused to give me communion that day. My soon to be wife saw no reason to not compromise since the day was all about love, not dogma. So, as she often did, MK devised her own compromise. She told me she planned on holding the host when he handed it to her, then break it in half, and share it with me. She did just that, he heard the snap of the host, and walked out on us.

 

The art of compromise continued later that day as well. You see when we got engaged, exactly 239 days earlier, we agreed we wanted a small, informal wedding. Given the realities of our two families that quickly evaporated. So we compromised. We each picked two things we felt were important to us for the wedding and then let our folks have their ways. MK wanted to pick her dress and her flowers. I wanted to wear an all-white tux and not have a, at the time very popular, fountain in our wedding cake. She did pick her dress and flowers. I did pick my tux. Once married and just before we entered our reception MK grabbed me by the lapels and gave me a long and meaningful kiss. I thought she was just hot for me, but then she whispered in my ear. “Sweetheart, don’t be mad about the cake!” Two steps later and hand-in-hand, I saw a beautiful wedding cake constructed of gorgeous petit fours, my favorites, surrounding a freaking, red, spurting fountain in its center. Ahh, compromise!

Throughout our lives we would continue to practice the art of compromise in our marriage. We wanted lots of children, we compromised on two. We both wanted careers and had them along with the very necessary daily compromises by one or the other of us to make that happen.

I thought we’d live in one house our whole lives while MK knew better. We compromised and quit after ten. On our homes she designed and built we compromised too. She compromised by letting me decide where to place each on the lot and I compromised by letting her design and decorate them.

We even compromised on hobbies. I loved to duck hunt, while she loved to shop so we compromised with my duck hunting weekends being offset by “Hunting Widows’ Revenge” shopping trips.

Just as importantly MK taught me there were those things in life were we needed to be totally uncompromising.

She taught me what we should hold inviolate. First and foremost was our love for each other. From day one to day last. Then came our values — the raising of our children, how we treated friends, the importance of family, and more.

Plus there was wine!

Before we were married two good friends threw us a bridal party. Rather than a common theme they chose wine and asked each person attending to bring us a bottle of their favorite red and a bottle of their favorite white. For a young, strapped couple it was a fabulous idea as it filled our nonexistent wine cellar immediately and best of all introduced us to many wines we would never have had the opportunity to try!

Wine, my wife taught me, was one of those places we did not need to compromise. If we couldn’t afford the wines we wanted we waited. There were many dinners and parties we hosted where our guests got no wine. Beer and drinks made with the cheap stuff, but no wine. Quickly folks came to realize when we put a bottle of wine on the table it was going to be worth drinking.

It was this uncompromising attitude that helped forge my desire to someday have a wine cellar of our own. MK never saw our cellar, but other than being dismayed at the cheapness of our plain pine racks, I believe she’d be quite happy with the fact I never compromise on what bottles I put in each slot!

Cancer doesn’t compromise though.

All this said the biggest compromise of all was when brain cancer entered our lives. MK compromised by giving up every aspect of her life for over 14 years. I had the easier compromise in that I was able to take care of her. Cancer made all the other compromises in our lives seem like pieces of cake…with or without a damn fountain!

Tonight I will raise a glass to the best woman in my life and not be ashamed at all when I burst into tears.