John & Abigail Adams

 One of my favorite love movies to watch is Love Actually. Just the opening sequence of it makes me cry. All the people greeting each other at Heathrow with the voiceover from Hugh Grant that says:

 When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love

I realize that we only seem to make our communication count when everything is all wrong. Or we are truly saying goodbye. People often say that you are lucky if someone has passed away and you got to say all you wanted to say. 

I can tell you that I have had those opportunities to say all I wanted to but that doesn't bring peace when you continue to live life and there are new things to tell the person you miss so much.

Everyday conversation between a husband and wife is often:

Wife: Did you get milk?

Husband: I didn't know I had to.

Wife: (sighs and rolls eyes)

But think back to the long conversations you used to have when you first started dating. Long nights. With shared intimacies. I bet they don't really happen anymore. Why? Those were great days. Problem is we know each other's stories. You don't want to hear them again and again. So how do we bridge the gap between what our communication was and what it has become?

So, in this episode of Pat and Mary Save Their Marriage we look at one of the greatest communicating couples of all time, John and Abigail Adams. We know this because they left their letters behind. Letters. Wasn't it nice when we wrote letters? Since we can't go backwards, Pat and I learn a lesson about how to make our modern communication count!

Missoni - Style, Olympics, Love.

Mary should probably be writing this post, because I know nothing about fashion.

I have, however, seen the name "Missoni" on a fair number of chic-looking things. And the name conjures in my mind images of fabulous people sipping espresso on Roman balconies.

I don't know if that's accurate, but if my name conjured that image in even one person, I'd be pretty jazzed.

So I can't help but be impressed to learn that chic, amazing brand actually started with a 16-year-old girl falling in love with an athlete at the 1948 Olympics.

Antony & Cleopatra - The Last Tango in Alexandria

This is where it all started for us.

Some years ago, at the Peoples Improv Theater's first "Sketchprov" festival, we got the suggestions of "Tango" along with "Antony & Cleopatra" at the same time. What unfolded was something like this extremely historically accurate scene.

Hey Will & Kate, read this!

We had a five-month engagement.

Now, I'll point out that we had been dating for... ahem... some time before we got engaged (I don't remember the exact amount of time, but each of Mary's six older brothers seemed to have it down to the hour). But the engagement itself was very brief. We got engaged over the holidays, knew we wanted a spring wedding, and didn't want to wait a year and a half, so we dove in.

Anyhow, there's a real benefit to a brief engagement - especially from a dude's point of view - in that there's not a lot of time to oscillate over decisions. Music, flowers, menu, readings - we looked around, listened for advice, chose our favorite, and moved on. Sometimes it was unnerving. And when it was, we tried to keep in mind that, in the end, what we were hoping for wasn't a great wedding, but a great marriage.

This is a really nice first-person account of Jon & Karen, a couple who celebrated their 33rd anniversary by watching the royal wedding last year.

Jon and I were quite busy on our wedding day: We had chosen to have the reception at our apartment party house (free); pick up the food and beverages at a Big Bear store ($315 for the food, $53 for soft drinks); and get three kegs of beer from a friend who worked as a deliveryman for a distributor ($110).The beer plan hit a snag when the friend used his only call from jail to let us know he couldn’t make the wedding but that the kegs would arrive as promised.

How ya fixed for spit and dry socks?

My father was a soldier, and one of his favorite sayings was "How're ya fixed for spit and dry socks?"

I'm still trying to figure out precisely what it meant, but it seemed to be what he always said when we really had no option but to grin and bear it. And it definitely came from combat.

I think it meant something like:
You're out of food. You're out of ammo. You're cold. Someone's shooting at you. But hey, you've got some fresh socks to put on, so really, things could be worse.

Socks become very important to a guy who's mucking through the mud for weeks at a time.

And they were extremely important to Ken Sweet, an Australian soldier in World War II.

Why? Because these were special socks. They started a 65 year marriage.

The Pain Now...

So Mary posted such a painful, endearing story yesterday - which of course is a reminder that love is certainly something deeper and more complex than the kiss that wakes the princess. It's much more like Nicholas Cage says in Moonstruck , "Love don't make things nice - it ruins everything." It does.

It also reminds me of one of my favorite films- which was based on a similar story. The film is Shadowlands and the story is that of CS Lewis and Joy Davidman.

If you're not familiar with the tale - when he was in his fifties, CS Lewis began a correspondence with an American Author named Joy Davidman. They were correspondents, then friends, then they got married.

At the hospital, as she was being treated for cancer.

What I love about the film is the change in Lewis's character - what love does to him. Of course, Lewis was a well-known theologian, and at the beginning of the film, he thinks he knows why we feel pain. He learns, of course, that he had never really felt pain. Not yet.
I found this clip of scenes:

Ida and Isidor

100 years ago the Titanic sunk. Absolute devastation. All the lives lost. Stories untold. The saddest part is that for generations to come people will think of Kate and Leo. I loved the movie. The first half anyway.

Some years ago one of my brothers bought my mother a Christmas present of tickets to “Titanic the Musical”. They always buy her 2 tickets and it's always understood that I will go with her. I was not excited for this one. Thought it was a knock off of the movie.

Well, I love to be wrong. I loved it! I mean, truly loved it. The musical focused on what was important, the lives and dreams of the passengers, no matter what class passenger. The story that knocked me back was Ida and Isidor Strauss. Ironically, it was the only true love story in the musical. They were well known since he was an owner of Macy's. In the video you will hear their story but what struck me in the musical was the song they sang entitled, “Still” towards the end of the show. The sentiment of the song was simple. “I loved you then and I love you Still”.

The way you move meStillFeels as it didWhen you first became mineWhispered the words"I will"...I loved you thenAnd I love youStill

In the hustle and bustle of jobs, kids, grocery shopping etc.... how often do we turn to our spouse and say, “I still love you.” My guess is not often enough. So next time you remind your significant other to change the light bulb in the hall already. Finish it with I STILL love you. Even though the light has been out for 2 weeks.

See what other lessons we learned from this beautiful story of love and how we applied those lessons to our modern day marriage.

Enjoy the video!!!

And if you are interested check out these links:

A Pat and Mary we'll look up to

This is not us.

It's another Pat and Mary. A previous Pat and Mary. A great Pat and Mary

A couple in their eighties who had been married for 58 years were found dead in their hot tub.Pat Marino, 85, and Mary Marino, 80, were discovered by a neighbour in their winter home after their family became worried that they had not heard from them.

The article goes on to interview one of their sons-in-law, who has this to say:

'There were no better parents to their three daughters, there were no better grandparents to the five grandchildren that they had, and there were no better in-laws to their three sons-in-law.'

And that's from a son-in-law.

So here's a couple that stayed together for 58 years, had three children, five grandkids, and went out together... in a hot tub. That's a Pat and Mary.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049798/Elderly-couple-married-60-years-dead-hot-tub.html#ixzz1pxoroDrR