Life After Happily Ever After

An excerpt from one of my manuscripts that I wanted to share today. Any and all feedback encouraged.

"Does it bother anyone else how happily ever after is portrayed in the movies? It’s always about the courting and dating and the beginning of love. Not that anything is wrong about the beginning of love; but it is only the tip of the iceberg. Every movie that ended with the proposal or wedding felt like I was being cut short. Maybe the directors and producers think that the audience doesn’t want a movie about the growing old together, the daily falling in love. Facing those moments when you truly have to choose to stay married despite the challenges and frustrations. Handling how you lose yourself so much in another person and then your children that you create a new identity almost. No doubt there is magic and love about finding the person you want to share your life with, but there is surely a different but unique magic in married life. There is certainly magic in the first real fight of married life and even in how you resolve it. Just as there is magic in watching your children learn how to share and tie their shoes and as they astound us with their wisdom. Magic in fighting with teenage and adult children as the bounds of the relationship have to change. Warmth in those calls telling you they are engaged or pregnant or in labor and even those calls telling you their car broke down and one of the grandkids broke his leg jumping off the deck. Magic in finding the house to yourself again except for weekends, holidays, and occasional dinners. Increased love as you watch your children start their families and become good parents and struggle with different problems than you did. And you hopefully get to watch them find the amount of love in a spouse and children that you were able to. What joy there is in spoiling each grandchild! And it’s a unique experience to take your partner to the doctor when their health starts to fail and caring for them as much as you possibly can. And there is a magic in those last years, months, weeks, and days together, when every moment becomes increasingly special. When you can reflect with the love of your life on all the things you built and became. And knowing that every moment you lived with everything you could and loved with every fiber of your being. And finally that minute comes when they slip away from this world to another one. But rarely do we get the whole story. Now we all know it’s not perfect or neat; rather it is messy and complicated and hard. Sometimes life is full or unpleasant surprises, disappointments, and down right horrible things. Life gets twisted or cut short. But it’s every moment of love and marriage that tells the true story, the good times and the bad ones, the fights and the working them out.