When you think about it, your marriage bed is a major focal point of life. That 7 foot square bit of mattress has been through every part of your life as much as you. Hot passion, sickness, TV, breakfast in bed and supper in the tub. The worst fights and the best make-up. Your kids have been invited in to save them from monsters in the night or watched closely through fever. You've built emotional walls to protect yourself from the monster beside you and found ways to burrow closer into their soul. Add in long nights of insomnia or worry and days that you just couldn't get up and there's nothing you haven't shared with that bed that you haven't shared with life.
Right now, after more than a quarter of a century, I'm sleeping on a spare sofa and Tish has our bed to herself. Saying goodnight and going into separate rooms leaves me with an odd sense of loneliness even though I know it's temporary. There is something sacrosanct about the covenant of that bed. In some ways it embodies the health of the marriage and my having to leave it while I convalesce, speaks deeply to me.
I can only hope that when I'm back on my feet that the bed won't reject me.
