Ree and Jas

I’m sitting with the dogs by side…sipping a cup of tea…a candle’s burning…and I am thinking about what a good weekend I had. There was stress…sadness…loneliness…tears…but also lots of smiles and laughs with people in my tribe. I even had fun watching a Packer game today…lol. One of my friends asked me if I think I will ever move anywhere else. My answer was “no”…not because I love the snow and cold soooo much….this is just where my people are…most of them anyway.

I always get a lot of comments from people about what a great guy Jason was…he was the best! I also get a lot of comments about our relationship…how special it was…how we really had a great marriage…how rare that kind of love is. To me we were just Ree and Jas. That’s it. I can’t even tell you the moment when I first fell in love with him. I do know that by Christmas of our Freshmen year of college I already knew he was the man I would marry…4 short months after I met him. Loving him was honestly the easiest thing in the world. That love was solid. I never doubted it…and never doubted that his love for me was the same.

Even though our love was easy…a happy marriage was something we still had to work at. Finding balance between each of us needing our individual time…usually him playing tennis…me going out with girlfriends. Us needing couple time…how to make sure that happened especially when our kids were small. And time together as a family. That balance was not always easy, but it was important to us so we worked at it and our marriage was stronger because of it.

We would argue about things, but we were always respectful of each other…no yelling…no name calling…no swearing (okay…maybe a little bit of swearing…usually by me…oops). I know a lot of couples who have the “never go to bed angry rule”. That didn’t work for us…usually things would go more to hell the more tired we got and sleeping on it and circling back the next day was a better tactic. And this may be TMI…but make-up sex is important!

We never stopped preferring each other’s company over anyone else’s. We genuinely enjoyed spending time together doing anything…or nothing. He was the first person I wanted to tell anything to…good or bad. I struggle a lot with this now…not having him here to tell things to. When we saw each other after any time away we always greeted each other with a smile. I never got tired of seeing his face.

I miss that face now. And I miss being the Ree to his Jas.