The Story Before The Story

As a child, I always assumed my parents loved each other.

I never really questioned it.

Even as I grew up and devolved into my moody, angsty and selfish teenage years — which I’ve just recently grown out of, thank you very much — it never crossed my mind that they didn’t love each other.

Even when I would wake up to them arguing and yelling at each other nearly every Saturday morning, I was still sure they loved each other.

I think that is because they always did — and still do to this day.

Their love now is the strongest I’ve seen it in my entire life.

So as we celebrate my Ali-like return to the keyboard and my blog, let us celebrate my parents — Jack and Carol Quealy — making it to 40 years of marriage.

That is something else, isn’t it? You really have to work to make that happen.

What I believe has created such a strong and long-lasting bond between them is the struggles and triumphs they’ve experienced together in four decades of holy-unholy matrimony.

As Ellis Boyd Redding said in The Shawshank Redemption, they crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Every time there is a river of shit in front of them, they crawl through it together and come out clean on the other side together.

They’ve done that many times.

But they’ve enjoyed the metaphorical beaches of Zihuatanejo so many more times.

 

November 19, 1976 — that is when myself, my brother Jake and my sisters Katie and Alyssa became a possibility.

“I love that you’re telling stories again.”

“This is the story before the story.”

If you don’t get that reference, just go ahead and click here.

For those of you who do not know the story of how my parents got engaged, you will soon understand just how much of a romantic my father is.

So my mom and dad — before they were my mom and dad — were at my great grandfather John Joseph Quealy’s funeral luncheon.

I know … we’re off to a good start here.

My dad watched as his siblings and their spouses walked in with their children. He realized the woman seated next to him was the one for him for the rest of his life.

“So how ‘bout it?” he turned and said to the then-Carol Hayes.

“How ‘bout what?” she replied.

“You and me.”

“You and me what?”

“Get married.”

He didn’t get down on one knee. He didn’t even have a ring.

Yet she said “yes.”

And who can blame her?

A guy proposing to her at his grandfather’s funeral luncheon? That just screams “husband material.”

After the luncheon, the whole Quealy squad went to my grandparents’ house where my grandfather sat down next to his son at the front window, looked at his future daughter-in-law then back to his son and said, ‘You better not let that one get away.”

“I ain’t,” my dad said.

“Well, you better propose soon.”

“I already did.”

“When?”

“Just now. At the luncheon.”

“Why haven’t you told everybody?”

“We didn’t think it was the right time.”

“This is the perfect time!”

So my father stood up and broke the good news — and the place erupted in screams, yells and cheers of celebration. Hugs all around and sad tears replaced with happy tears.

What came after is a timeline of love that began June 24, 1977.

One that still presses forward to this day with a hell of a lot of line ahead of it.

One that has created many more timelines of love through their four children and four grandchildren.

Those timelines of love will spawn more timelines of love and so on and so forth.

Just look at what a simple “How ‘bout it?” followed by an eventual “Yes” has done through 40 years.