In Sickness and in Health

Chris is sick. He’s in the living room, watching whatever came from Netflix and, from my study, I hear him coughing at regular intervals. It’s the sound you would get if an enraged goose and a very old bear were to startle each other. When he talks, it’s a dead on Barry-White-with-a-broken-nose.

He caught this cold from me, and my guilt compels me to ply him with care, which he fends off with adorably weak little protests. I can’t get anything bad-tasting down him, like the traumatic, but effective remedies I get from my brilliant witch doctors, Carol Wade-Hak and Tara Jeffery. But, I did manage to tempt him with vitamin C crystals drowned in apple juice and found some cherry flavored zinc lozenges that were candy-tasting enough even for his very suspicious palate.  I also got some veggies down him by drowning them in peanut sauce, which is full of fresh ginger and garlic. It’s like his immune system is a political prisoner, and I’m on the outside working for the resistance, slipping messages past the guard while distracting him with feminine wiles, or in this case, treats.

All this puts me in mind of that “sickness and health” vow. Neither of us is a good patient. I get passive-aggressive (It has to be somebody’s fault that I’m sick.) and he gets annoyingly stoic. We’re both belligerent about admitting that we’re sick, and we both compound this foible by doing little to prevent it in the first place. Partly this is due to being too busy, but even when the schedule is more spacious, we tend to treat our bodies like cheap cars – put as little time and money into them as possible and wring as much work out of them as you can. Just patch, primer and jerry-rig some more miles out of them. We’re both pretty dinged up, but Chris… Well, we’re pretty sure that he’s broken at least half of his bones. He’s had pneumonia 3 times, that I know of.

The impending marriage is bringing visions of the long-term implications of this short-sighted behavior. Do we really want to stick each other with a clunker? When you enter into a 50+ year contract, your want something dependable.

I am seriously thinking about re-evaluating my maintenance regime. Otherwise, on the altar, I’m going to feel like one of those unconscionable used-car salesman that dress up a junker in some fresh paint and sell it with a no-return policy. Not a good way to enter into a contract that so explicitly calls upon the signers for transparency and integrity.

Disclaimer: Chris is concerned that this blog entry will have you all worrying about the state of our actual well-being. Please don’t. Aside from my enjoyment of hyperbole, there is the fact that we are much healthier than your average person with an artistic vocation. Neither of us is hooked on heroin, having irresponsible sex with multiple partners or getting into bar fights. With the exception of Chris’ insomnia, my undiagnosable hysterical ailments that resolve without intervention and our mutual inability to find time for sunshine and exercise… We’re in pretty great shape.

La Deb

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