The best reminder I ever heard with regard to loving my wife who’s living with bipolar disorder came from a pal of mine I call Jack Lemmon.
“In Al-Anon,” Jack Lemmon said, “they talk about the Three C’s: I didn’t cause my wife’s drinking, I can’t control it, and I can’t cure it.”
The real Jack Lemmon was an actor you might have seen in a few thousand old movies. In Some Like It Hot, he was the bass player dressed in drag swooning over Marilyn Monroe. In the Odd Couple he played the uptight divorcee Felix Unger; in Missing, the distraught Christian Scientist father of a kidnapping victim in Chile; and in Glengarry Glen Ross, Shelley Levene, the washed-up real estate salesman.
I met my Jack Lemmon not at an Al-Anon meeting but in a support group for spouses and partners of those living with a mental illness. . . .
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