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“Don’t worry about it,” Graham urged me. “We knew they weren’t exactly thrilled about our relationship from the start, so I expected this news would come as a shock to them.”
“It worries me, though. We’ve been together for more than a year now, and they haven’t softened at all toward me,” I pointed out. “I don’t think this is going to get any better.”
Graham moved toward me, wrapped his arms around my body, and allowed his eyes to roam over my face. “I wish I could change it. I wish I could fix all of this. I know it’s happening, and I’m doing my best to try to get them to come around, but there’s no question this isn’t going to happen overnight. At the end of the day, no matter what happens, you are the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. I don’t want it to come to that, but if it doesn’t turn around, I’m going to do what I’ve got to do and cut them out.”
My shoulders fell. “I’m not asking you to cut your family off.”
“I know. But they aren’t making it easy for me to not lean toward doing that. I want to give them the opportunity to do the right thing. If they choose not to, my priority is your happiness and mine.”
I sat with those words for a bit, considering the reality of them. Graham was prepared to give his family up for a life with me. It wasn’t what I wanted for him, but I thought it spoke volumes about how serious he was about me and the life he wanted us to build together. Given that my family didn’t live close, I had hoped things would improve with Graham’s family. Unfortunately, not only did they not improve, but they also got worse.
I’d remained working at my job until the point Grahamand I had gotten engaged, and I moved into his house with him. Looking back now, I realized how foolish it was to do that, but the thought never crossed my mind that Graham would die before we could get married.
When his mom and sister found out I left my job, they were quick to share their feelings on it. And they did it when he and I managed to get separated for a brief period during a party for one of his relatives a few months before he died.
“So, Graham said you left your job. Is planning a wedding going to take up so much of your time that you can’t be bothered to work until after you get married?” Graham’s sister, Laura, scoffed.
Before I had the chance to answer her, Graham’s mother, Beth, noted, “You aren’t the first woman to get married. Plenty of women have planned weddings while they continued to work.”
Realizing they had no intention of ever allowing things to get better among us, I decided to no longer accept their crap. “Actually, I didn’t just leave my job to plan the wedding. I’m doing that while I’m taking care of our home.”
Laura rolled her eyes. “Yeah, the home that my brother paid for.”
“What are you planning to do once the wedding has passed?” Beth questioned me.
“What do you mean? I’m going to continue doing what Graham and I discussed and decided would be best for us.”
There wasn’t a question in my mind that if Graham had shared with his family members that I’d left my job that he wound up having a similar conversation. The truth was that they were asking me questions they already knew theanswer to, and I refused to entertain the conversation further.
“So, you’re going to mooch off my son for the rest of your life,” Beth declared.
“I’m sorry you see it that way.”
She shook her head in disgust. “There’s no other way to see it. He’s going to go off to work every day while you sit around, doing nothing.”
That wasn’t what was happening, but I wasn’t going to stand there and try to convince her otherwise. Neither Beth nor Laura would change their minds.
“Believe what you want. I don’t care. Graham and I are happy, we’re going to be together, and there’s nothing you can say or do that’s going to change that. How we choose to live our lives will be just that—our choice,” I seethed. I’d gotten myself worked up enough that I couldn’t stop myself before I added, “Just a word of advice, though. You don’t have to like me, but I’m going to be Graham’s wife. You can choose to accept his decision to marry me or not. But fair warning, if you can’t figure out how to be civil with me, you’re going to risk losing him, because he’s going to choose me over you every single time.”
Beth gasped as Laura fired back, “I can’t believe you just said that.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well, believe it, because it’s the truth.”
Without giving them a chance to respond, I walked away and went in search of Graham.
Later that evening, after we’d gotten home, I told him about what had happened. He was understandably angry and insisted he’d had enough. The next day, he met with his mother and sister—a meeting I hadn’t been a part of—and he gave them an ultimatum. Either they turned things around, or he was done with them.
They’d apologized to him and promised they’d do their best to be civil with me. Without any other family gatherings before he died, there was never an opportunity for them to prove they cared to make a change.
And now I was here after all these months had passed, wondering where to go next.
With no good plan and a desperate need for advice, I decided to make a phone call. Two rings later, my sister, Jolene, answered. “Hey, Lamise. How’s it going?”
“Not so good,” I confessed.
“Having another rough day?” she asked.
I sighed. I couldn’t decide if I would rather that have been the case. On the one hand, that might have been easier. But with this new bit of information, I couldn’t say I was angry about knowing the truth. Or, part of it, anyway.
