Without a Word_ How a Boy's Unspoken Love Changed Everything - Jill Kelly [14]
For me, the public attention our ceremony and reception received paled in comparison to the beauty and wonder of it all. Our wedding day truly was perfect… except for one thing. Jim’s mother, Alice, had passed away barely a month before our wedding celebration.
Mrs. Kelly fought a very long, cruel battle with emphysema, and the entire family was at her side the moment she took her last breath. In her honor, Jim danced with our one-year-old daughter, Erin, to his mother’s favorite song, “Memories (The Way We Were)” by Barbra Streisand. The beauty of the moment helped ease the sting of our loss, but Alice Kelly was dearly missed.
After a two-week, whirlwind honeymoon in Italy, we couldn’t wait to get home to Erin Marie. Fourteen days is a long time to be absent when your baby is growing so rapidly. My parents made sure Erin got the royal treatment while we were away. “Grammarazzi” (like paparazzi, a humorous nickname we christened my mother with because of her obsession for taking pictures) conducted many photo sessions of “Princess Kelly” decked out in all sorts of adorable outfits.
As you’d expect, everything Erin did was incredible in our eyes, and like most new parents, we were overly enthusiastic whenever our firstborn attempted anything. She was always the star of the show and demanded our undivided attention—which we were happy to give. Once all the wedding excitement was over, our new normal as a family began: Jim resumed his hectic workout and travel schedule, and Erin and I hung out the rest of the summer. Daddy wasn’t home that much, so the two of us did a lot of girlie activities together.
I went into marriage full of starry-eyed expectations and consequently found myself disappointed in Jim and our relationship more often than not. I had known what I was getting myself into as far as the overall lifestyle of an NFL star, but I was hoping that somehow our marriage would change things. Now that we were actually newlyweds, I imagined that Jim would want to spend more time at home with Erin and me. Unfortunately, that was just wishful thinking, and Jim spent most of that first summer of our marriage traveling. I often wondered where he was and tried to stay on top of his ever-changing schedule, but it wasn’t easy.
One of the responsibilities I appointed myself that summer was to clean house. Not just the usual vacuuming and dusting, but giving our home a major overhaul. As part of that task, I was determined to get rid of the remnants of Jim’s bachelor life. I descended on drawers full of letters, cards, female garments that didn’t belong to me, as well as pictures of pretty girls—some with clothes on and some without. Some of the items I discovered were shocking. In fact, I remember thinking to myself… And this is someone’s daughter. What a shame.
How awkward I felt. I wanted to make our house a home. A normal home. A secure and special place for our daughter to grow up. Yet it was becoming apparent that there would be nothing normal about being married to Jim Kelly.
As I sorted through drawers and closets full of stuff, I found myself growing increasingly angry with Jim. His past, and the baggage that went along with it, was everywhere. My relationship baggage was history; I had just assumed Jim’s would be, too.
If anyone should be purging the past, I reasoned, it should be him. But he wasn’t the one sifting through this stuff. It was me, his wife. Not even three months into our marriage, I was the one spending afternoons cleaning skeletons from my husband’s closet.
Skeletons that he should have handled before the wedding.
Skeletons that filled my mind and heart with jealousy, fear, doubt, and mistrust, simply because they were still there.
What a great start to an already-fragile relationship, I thought to myself.
The leftovers from his bachelorhood,