When I Said Yes

I never told Ryan, but I knew he was going to propose to me before he did it.  I didn't know when he would, or how, but I knew he was planning it.  One night when I was stopping at my parents' house to tutor my nephew, I bumped into Ryan on his way out.  He had a pretty flimsy excuse for why he had been there, and while I didn't figure it out right away, I knew that's why he had come.  I let him have his secret, and tried to forget about it myself.  I always wanted to be surprised when I was asked that question, and it did neither of us any good for me to have figured it out.  Until the day he died, I never mentioned that I knew why he was there.

Months earlier, I was frustrated.  Ryan and I had been together several years, and we didn't talk marriage much.  I was beginning to worry that it wasn't something he cared much about.  I know we had talked about it before and that he had said he wanted a family, and I couldn't imagine that he was living with me for all of this time and didn't want to make it permanent.  But, I was terrified to bring it up- afraid that the conversation would ruin things.  I knew I eventually would have to say something though, and I planned for it.  I was beginning to get scared that I'd waited too long, and ended up in a dead end relationship.

Ryan and I taking a selfie in New
York, before "selfies" were a thing.

In February 2009, Ryan asked me if I wanted to spend Valentine's weekend in New York City.  I love New York, and was so thrilled that he had come up with the idea on his own.  It seemed so spontaneous and romantic.  Even though it seemed a little too cliche for him, I started to get it into my head that he was going to propose to me on this trip.  I tried not to get too excited, but the surprise trip was so out of character for Ryan that I thought maybe there would be more surprises to come.

It wasn't until later that I found out Ryan didn't come up with this idea at all.  It was a happy accident- his parents had planned a trip to New York and decided late in the game that they would cut the trip short by a day.  So they offered Ryan the last night of their hotel stay, and he took it.  The trip was a lot of fun- but no ring.  I tried not to be, but I was dissapointed.   Not only did I have no confirmation that Ryan wanted to be with me forever, but he hadn't taken me to a particularly romantic dinner (I think we ate at an Irish pub), and there wasn't really any grand romantic gesture at all.  In fact, his entire Valentine's Day gift was predicated on the fact that his parents happened to have a hotel room that they needed to fill.

If I feared that Ryan was uncommitted, or lacked in romace, I was wrong.  Ryan was totally, completely committed.  He was perhaps the most committed guy I've ever met.  When he decided that he wanted something, he set his sights on it and gave it everything he had.  In fact, that's one of the most important things I want Sophie to know about her Dad- he was extremely devoted to our family, to our future.  He would have done anything for us, for her, if he'd had the chance; he would have always been there.  I see now that he simply didn't want to get married or have kids until he was ready, so he could do it right.  I recognize that many happy couples go through hard times and split up, but I really believe that Ryan would have done everything he could to make sure that never happened to us, especially once kids were involved.  For the fact that I wasn't sure he wanted to settle down, he was so content being "settled down" in the end.  Marriage, family, grown-up life, it suited him.

And while he wasn't one for the grand romantic gesture, he worked with a quieter, more understated type of romance: he delighted in making me happy.  When he did something that made me happy, you could tell how happy it made him.  He felt that his biggest job in our relationship was to make me feel loved and taken care of.  And there's simply nothing in the world more romantic than being made to feel special.  I've never felt more special than I did with Ryan- particularly in the years after we were married.

While I was worried that Ryan might not be the marrying kind, he was deciding to buy a ring.  I was busy worrying that we wouldn't have a future, and he was busy getting ready for it.  That coming summer, he was travelling to Europe for three months to work on research for his dissertation.  I was coming to Berlin for ten days to visit, and his original plan was to ask me to marry him in the Tiergarten, Berlin's sprawling public gardens.  He decided against it, because he was afraid of travelling with the ring.  In my head though, I can imagine it.  That would have been the grand gesture, and just the fact that Ryan thought of it meant something to me.  Plan B was proposing to me the Friday before he left to go to Europe, at my parents' house, during an annual fireworks display that can be seen from there.  Again, a grand romantic gesture.  He changed his mind on that one at the last minute too, because there were large number of people there he didn't know, and he felt uncomfortable.

Ryan and I right after getting engaged.
One of the happiest moments of my life.

In the end, he asked me to marry him in front of his family, a couple of days before he left for Germany.  It had been weeks since the incident when I bumped into him leaving my parents' house after asking for my Dad's blessing, and I wasn't really thinking about it anymore - the one, single time in my life I managed to put something like that out of my mind.  So, even though I knew it was going to happen, I was surprised.  And happier than I'd ever been, ever, in my life before it.  That day felt like the beginning of the rest of my life- a day that I knew I had a future with the man I loved, and that he would always be there to love me.

I've been thinking about that day a lot this week, because it was over Memorial Day weekend that year, so this week is a sort of unofficial anniversary of the day we started planning to grow old together.  Thinking of this now, I'm happy at the memory, but I feel hollow right after, thinking of the unfulfilled plans and hopes.  That is how it is for me- even the happy memories (of which there are very many) come with heartache and a deep sense of loss.  When I said "yes" to Ryan's proposal, I absolutely thought I was starting down the path to "Happily ever after", not to "'Tis better to have loved and lost".  Without a doubt, it's true that I'd rather have the memories than not have them, even with the hurt.  I just wish I could find a way to have never lost in the first place, and get back to the happy ever after Ryan and I had both been imagining.