The Middle-Aged Bride

The English call it “boxing day.” In Catholic countries it is St. Stephen’s Day. For me it is the anniversary of the day I was married to John Durkalski in 1987.

I met John in the fall of 1986. I was 57 years old; John was 68, a little man wearing glasses, going bald, with a pot belly and bow legs. He was wonderful.

John was the kindest, most considerate, most loving man. My son David, who became his step-son, described him as “The finest man I ever knew.” John was a care-giver. His sister told me, “He carried Vera (his first wife, who died of cancer) on a pillow.” I said, “He married me because I was the woman he met who most needed taking care of.”

When I met John, I was staying with my daughter Martha and her husband Don. The newlyweds were not thrilled to have a mother-in-law as a semi-permanent house guest, and I was miserable having to live with them. I had no place else to go except the homeless shelter. I was suing my children’s father for support. I had no money.

John was thrifty. The son of an illiterate Polish immigrant, he grew up poor during the Great Depression. He turned out lights. He also was generous. We had been dating only a few months on Valentine’s Day when he gave me an enormous heart-shaped box of chocolates. Martha was impressed. “Don gave me a one-pound box, and it is not even heart-shaped.”

John was funny. He could see the ridiculous side of any situation and would make a witty remark to defuse any difficulty. He was in a slight accident with a car driven by an off-duty policeman, and he got the officer to pay for the damage to John’s car.

My lawsuit was settled on November 19. John and I married on December 26.

On Christmas Day my three children and Don came to dinner at John’s condo in Darien, Illinois. After they went home John put the “My Fair Lady” album on the stereo, and we danced all around the living and dining rooms to “I’m getting married in the morning.”

The next morning at 11 a.m. we did just that. Before an alter decorated with dozens of poinsettias in St. Andrew’s Church, Downers Grove, Illinois, we pledged our love in the presence of my three children, John’s four sons, in-laws, and his six small grandchildren. After the Episcopal wedding we had a private luncheon at a local restaurant. When John asked for the check, his son Paul said, “Dad, it has been taken care of.”

Afterwards John’s family went to the elegant Glenn Ellen home of John’s son Peter, where his wife Delores served champagne and a wedding cake topped with the same little bride and groom figurines which had been on the cake when she and Pete were married.

The next day was Sunday. After church Connie Butler arranged another wedding cake and punch for my friends at St. Andrews to congratulate us middle-aged newlyweds. Then in the afternoon more Downers Grove and Woodridge friends came to a party with more wedding cake and punch at Martha and Don’s house in Lisle. (We covered several Chicago suburbs in our three-day wedding partying.)

John and I could have danced all night. And we did. A week later on New Year’s Eve at the Woodridge Country Club.

John and I kept on dancing. Four years later we danced at the New Year’s Eve Party at the senior center in Albuquerque. John had survived as “a miracle man” in October with a 10-hour surgery after his aorta burst. He was on oxygen, he didn’t feel good, but when the band played “It had to be you,” to please me he got up, and we danced together. I had no idea that three weeks later he would die in the back yard of our Albuquerque home.

I don’t feel sad when I think of John. I remember that happy day, December 26, 1987, the New Year’s dance in 1991, and all the happy days with John.