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Marriage story
You can't give what you don't have, but the Rosses had it
"Marriage. Marriage is what brings us together today. Marriage, that blessed arrangement, that dream within a dream…”
- The Impressive Clergyman in The Princess Bride
David and Cheryl Ross met in 1964 at a San Diego military dance. David was newly enlisted in the Marine Corps. He had seen Cheryl at a previous dance, and returned in hopes of meeting her. They danced. They hit it off. The next year, they were wed.
A wedding is the end of something, and the beginning of something else: the work of a lifetime. In the '70s, the Rosses discovered World Wide Marriage Encounter. After their Encounter weekend, they found they shared a desire to work with other married couples. The began presenting at Encounter weekends like the one they attended, introducing themselves with,
“I’m Cheryl…”
“I’m Dave…”
"...and together, we’re the Rosses!”
Right from the outset: We are two who have become one. As a team, they devoted untold thousands of hours of their time and care to other couples: the engaged, the married, the together-but-troubled, the couples who wanted to learn natural family planning. They were kind, funny, relatable, and frank, and embodied an unforced, earthy spirituality.
During presentations, Dave was jovial and prone to wandering off topic. He always wore blue jeans and Birkenstocks with socks, and he habitually carried folded papers and one too many pens in his breast pocket. One of the papers contained favorite jokes he might want to share. Another bore the reminder, “Affirm Cheryl." For her part, Cheryl was more businesslike, more inclined to re-direct the conversation — and her husband. Over the course of more than 40 years, they almost never missed a day of writing to one another — a practice they had learned from the Encounter — even as they raised five children and worked as schoolteachers.
As is probably clear, I admired them greatly — them, and the marriage they made. So did my wife Jamie.
Last year, the couple left their longtime home in San Carlos and moved into the Sungarden Terrace Assisted Living and Memory Care in Lemon Grove. Cheryl did not need assistance, but David was entering the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and needed of a lot of help. She had held out as David’s home caretaker for a long time as his memory deteriorated, but he began to decline rapidly after being hospitalized for a respiratory illness, and she realized was time for outside help. It's hard for me to think of the enormity of that moment. But at least she could stay close by, in the assisted living section one floor up from Sungarden Terrace's memory care facility.
Jamie visited her there before I did. When she came back, she told me, “Cheryl is like a ray of sunshine in that place." She talked to everyone, checked on everyone — residents and employees alike. When I visited, I saw it was true. She was easy and natural with people. She didn’t carry herself like someone in the throes of a grievous loss, but like someone accepting life on life’s terms. And she was unpretentiously affectionate to boot, free with smiles and hugs, introducing us to the gals at the front desk.
We had arrived around six. Like many residents, she had eaten dinner at 4:30. She showed us around the place: down the long hallways, past the TV room, the beauty parlor room, the meeting rooms for visitors. Past the Norman Rockwell prints that lined the hallways. Her room looked like she'd been living there for years: her sewing machine on a table, family photos, crosses and some landscape paintings on the walls. She had managed to transpose more of the familiar feeling of her cozy old home into this institutional space than I would have thought possible. Sometimes, highway traffic sounds like traffic. Sometimes, it sounds like the ocean. Coming through the open window of her room, it sounded like the ocean.
We talked for a while about her family and ours, and about how she was holding up. Before we left the room to visit David downstairs, she let us know that she wasn’t sure how she would be doing after was actually gone. She had been told that he might pass in two to four weeks, but she didn’t think he would remain alive for that long. He wasn’t eating, speaking, or opening his eyes. He seemed to have one foot in another world already.
When we got into the memory care unit downstairs, we found that David had slid partially out of his bed. We had to call for a nurse to help put him back in; though he had lost a great deal of weight, he still had the frame of a big guy. Jamie and I waited in the hallway, the unfamiliar object of curious suspicion by a few residents. “Who are they?” asked one old woman. A firm, compact old man walked up and down the hallway talking with various other residents. His Parkinson’s made him twitch. He wore a shirt that said on the back, “What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Except for a Marine. A Marine will definitely kill you." I learned that when David, another USMC veteran, had moved in, the two of them had gotten into a scuffle, which they patched up quickly. Looking at him pacing the hall, I thought he was worried about David, too.
Once David was situated, Jamie and I joined Cheryl at his beside. He lay there in the half-dark, skinny, eyes shut, distant, somewhat noisy and agitated. He wore an Oregon Ducks sweatshirt that a grandson had given him, along with sweatpants and socks. He was parched, and Cheryl gave him water from a sponge on a stick that she brought to his lips. She seemed able to tell exactly how much he needed, despite his seeming so far away. Over the next couple of minutes, he took in a few delicate spongefuls. Cheryl smiled at us, and playfully lifted open one of his eyelids. “This is the only way I get to see his blue eyes now,” she said.
Before we left the room, Cheryl said, “I love you Dave." While we had been there, he had made many sounds, all of them indecipherable to us. But after Cheryl said that, he offered a strained but absolutely audible “I love you” in return. We all heard it.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Marriage story
You can't give what you don't have, but the Rosses had it
Marriage story
You can't give what you don't have, but the Rosses had it
"Marriage. Marriage is what brings us together today. Marriage, that blessed arrangement, that dream within a dream…”
- The Impressive Clergyman in The Princess Bride
David and Cheryl Ross met in 1964 at a San Diego military dance. David was newly enlisted in the Marine Corps. He had seen Cheryl at a previous dance, and returned in hopes of meeting her. They danced. They hit it off. The next year, they were wed.
A wedding is the end of something, and the beginning of something else: the work of a lifetime. In the '70s, the Rosses discovered World Wide Marriage Encounter. After their Encounter weekend, they found they shared a desire to work with other married couples. The began presenting at Encounter weekends like the one they attended, introducing themselves with,
“I’m Cheryl…”
“I’m Dave…”
"...and together, we’re the Rosses!”
Right from the outset: We are two who have become one. As a team, they devoted untold thousands of hours of their time and care to other couples: the engaged, the married, the together-but-troubled, the couples who wanted to learn natural family planning. They were kind, funny, relatable, and frank, and embodied an unforced, earthy spirituality.
During presentations, Dave was jovial and prone to wandering off topic. He always wore blue jeans and Birkenstocks with socks, and he habitually carried folded papers and one too many pens in his breast pocket. One of the papers contained favorite jokes he might want to share. Another bore the reminder, “Affirm Cheryl." For her part, Cheryl was more businesslike, more inclined to re-direct the conversation — and her husband. Over the course of more than 40 years, they almost never missed a day of writing to one another — a practice they had learned from the Encounter — even as they raised five children and worked as schoolteachers.
As is probably clear, I admired them greatly — them, and the marriage they made. So did my wife Jamie.
Last year, the couple left their longtime home in San Carlos and moved into the Sungarden Terrace Assisted Living and Memory Care in Lemon Grove. Cheryl did not need assistance, but David was entering the final stages of Alzheimer’s, and needed of a lot of help. She had held out as David’s home caretaker for a long time as his memory deteriorated, but he began to decline rapidly after being hospitalized for a respiratory illness, and she realized was time for outside help. It's hard for me to think of the enormity of that moment. But at least she could stay close by, in the assisted living section one floor up from Sungarden Terrace's memory care facility.
Jamie visited her there before I did. When she came back, she told me, “Cheryl is like a ray of sunshine in that place." She talked to everyone, checked on everyone — residents and employees alike. When I visited, I saw it was true. She was easy and natural with people. She didn’t carry herself like someone in the throes of a grievous loss, but like someone accepting life on life’s terms. And she was unpretentiously affectionate to boot, free with smiles and hugs, introducing us to the gals at the front desk.
We had arrived around six. Like many residents, she had eaten dinner at 4:30. She showed us around the place: down the long hallways, past the TV room, the beauty parlor room, the meeting rooms for visitors. Past the Norman Rockwell prints that lined the hallways. Her room looked like she'd been living there for years: her sewing machine on a table, family photos, crosses and some landscape paintings on the walls. She had managed to transpose more of the familiar feeling of her cozy old home into this institutional space than I would have thought possible. Sometimes, highway traffic sounds like traffic. Sometimes, it sounds like the ocean. Coming through the open window of her room, it sounded like the ocean.
We talked for a while about her family and ours, and about how she was holding up. Before we left the room to visit David downstairs, she let us know that she wasn’t sure how she would be doing after was actually gone. She had been told that he might pass in two to four weeks, but she didn’t think he would remain alive for that long. He wasn’t eating, speaking, or opening his eyes. He seemed to have one foot in another world already.
When we got into the memory care unit downstairs, we found that David had slid partially out of his bed. We had to call for a nurse to help put him back in; though he had lost a great deal of weight, he still had the frame of a big guy. Jamie and I waited in the hallway, the unfamiliar object of curious suspicion by a few residents. “Who are they?” asked one old woman. A firm, compact old man walked up and down the hallway talking with various other residents. His Parkinson’s made him twitch. He wore a shirt that said on the back, “What doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger. Except for a Marine. A Marine will definitely kill you." I learned that when David, another USMC veteran, had moved in, the two of them had gotten into a scuffle, which they patched up quickly. Looking at him pacing the hall, I thought he was worried about David, too.
Once David was situated, Jamie and I joined Cheryl at his beside. He lay there in the half-dark, skinny, eyes shut, distant, somewhat noisy and agitated. He wore an Oregon Ducks sweatshirt that a grandson had given him, along with sweatpants and socks. He was parched, and Cheryl gave him water from a sponge on a stick that she brought to his lips. She seemed able to tell exactly how much he needed, despite his seeming so far away. Over the next couple of minutes, he took in a few delicate spongefuls. Cheryl smiled at us, and playfully lifted open one of his eyelids. “This is the only way I get to see his blue eyes now,” she said.
Before we left the room, Cheryl said, “I love you Dave." While we had been there, he had made many sounds, all of them indecipherable to us. But after Cheryl said that, he offered a strained but absolutely audible “I love you” in return. We all heard it.
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