I love him for who he is, not for what he does for me or my father, but I have to take some time here to reflect on how grateful I am for him, and all that he does. Perhaps, in thirty years, when I want to throw his GameWhatsit3000 out the window, I can read this and be thankful.
Six and a half years ago we met. Last July he proposed and I accepted. Probably right around then, my father found out that his life savings was gone, due to some combination of sleeze on another's part and poor choices on my dad's part. He hadn't told us, and didn't tell us when I happily told him about the engagement. My dad has also been sick with multiple myeloma for quite a while -- but initially it was really pretty good, as MM goes. But it's been getting worse, which he also kept from me. I think he was really just trying to protect me. Once we found out about the swindling and the worsening health, darling fiance kicked into high gear and has been helping my dad with his bills and paperwork. He sorted through months, even years of mail and papers for him, and organized the whole lot. Hell, when my dad had a pulmonary embolism even before all this, Win sat with me for hours in the ER, and -- double hell -- he even helped my poor Daa stand up to pee in that awful ER room.
Win has held me together, been an absolute pillar of charming strength, and I am beyond grateful. He's postponed his job search after returning from Iraq last summer, to be better able to help my dad, whose health rather quickly worsened in the past few weeks. He held me after we were awakened by a panicked call from dad on my first day of winter vacation, and I sobbed at the thought of the downhill ride we must really be heading for now. He sat with me and held me on the bathroom floor at his parents' house, after I had a knock-down drag-out on the phone with dad's ladyfriend, who was blocking my attempts to secure mental health support for my father. He came to find me in the CT woods in the snow and freezing rain, after I walked off in only cotton workout clothes and sorrell boots to burn off the rage, and had laid down in a snowy field staring up at the icy rain, still sobbing. He worried I would go too far and get too cold to come back.
He's even foregone real food and is doing nutrisystems with me as I fight to lose weight throughout all this, so the Navy won't continue to have my @ss for lunch and/or kick me out. He's found ways to gently encourage my workouts, without causing me to feel defensive or enraged.
He's adopted my dad's parrot with me. He's been bitten time and time again and gone back for more, and has now come to an odd sort of friendship with him.
And now he's working like a dog to help us sort through all our stuff, much of it still in boxes from the move 1.5 years ago just before he went to Iraq and I started my internship, to make room for my father here in our 2 bedroom 4th floor walkup apartment -- now that my dad's sudden inability to work has forced him to retire, with no savings, and much debt. My poor, crotchety lonely father, who's always been taken care of by someone else -- first his mom, then mine. His idea of camping out is 4 stars instead of 5.... The thought of him having to move into his daughter & her fiance's apartment must be demoralizing at best. Win is over there at dad's house right now, helping him figure out what to do with his finances, figuring out what of his things we can sell, how best to get out of the house he's upsidedown on. Jeebus, he even went to the drugstore on the way to get dad his required suppositories.
All this and still he helps plan our wedding, grabs me and tells me all that matters is that we'll be married in ten months, when I lament that I don't have the buoyant energy to think about flowers and photographers and dresses and favors and invitations and aaaaagh!
How could I not love this man? Impossible. I love him with all my heart and soul, and I cannot thank him enough for all he's done and is doing for me and for my father. I worry when I see his jaw set with stress, like I've never seen before. It melts my heart that he's taken on my burdens so bravely.
