May you always be as vibrant and gracious and tender as you are today. May you never again in this blessed lifetime put milk on to heat for your coffee and turn the burner on high and wander away and get absorbed in something else and have to shriek and sprint into the kitchen as you have every! single! morning! since I met you thirty years ago. May you always be as selflessly engaged and fascinated by other people and unabsorbed by yourself as you are today. May you never again lie awake sleepless worrying that the children’s struggles are totally your fault because you were not a good enough mom. May you always have those arresting blue-gray eyes exactly the color and potential fury of the sea. May you always be as graciously and kindheartedly and un-greedily you as you are today. May you someday love yourself as much as I love you. May you, when you finally pass into the next life at age 114, still looking like you are maybe thirty-seven, get total extra credit from the Merciful One for having cheerfully endured marriage to me for so long, though there were endless better candidates for husbandry, handsomer and richer and much more willing to go camping in the muddy sticky insect-ridden wilderness; but, trust me, none of them would have savored and appreciated and celebrated you as much as me. And so: amen.
This excerpt from A Book of Uncommon Prayer: 100 Celebrations of the Miracle & Muddle of the Ordinary is reprinted with permission of Ave Maria Press.
Brian Doyle (1956-2017) was an award-winning author who served as the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland in Oregon from 1991 to 2017.
