OSSIE & RUBY: Icons for 50 Years

            Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis were icons of romance, passion and love in a relationship and marriage lasting over 50 years. In their jointly penned memoir, With Ossie & Ruby: In This Life Together, one of black America ’s most beloved couples revealed the secrets to their long-term success.

            “Secrets” is not the best word, though; better would be “principles and practices” lived by. Hard work, certainly, was a constant given, lessons in the sexual revolution were completed in the ‘60s, while achieving a graduate level education in political struggle, not to mention earning a virtual doctorate in raising a family. Ossie’s transcending of the old patriarchal model was a big step. Both were spiritually mature, hence they had wisdom to define what’s really important over time, married or not, but especially if married.

             In the chapter, “Love, Marriage, and Struggle,” they confronted the question: “How did you stay married so long?” Ruby: “. . . marriage is a long process that goes on at some level every day for the rest of your life. You divorce or marry around some issue constantly. The percentage of days married determines success. We have to learn to live together.” She thought she knew the meaning of love when she and Ossie got married, “but as I see now, I was only in the kindergarten of the proposition. To arrive at love is like working on a double doctorate in the subject of life.”

             She was very pleased when Ossie began pitching in with housework, and spending more time with the kids. Her mood lifted; she began thinking of surprises. Internal contentment (inside the heart and home) gave them more to give to others outside. During the civil rights movement they were committed to helping, “those out on the front line make Justice just, and to be part of whatever the Struggle was all about.”

             They laughed at breakfast, spoke on the topics au courant for the day. Ossie told stories to their young children. In time, she and he “learned to pray together every day, even if only by phone.” They came to a deeper understanding of love. “When you want and pray for someone to be all God created them to be, despite any personal sacrifice it might entail, that is love” Ruby describes. “Love is overcoming. Love is passion, clothed in infinite patience.”

Essential, especially for men, is to divine the distinction between love and sex, as did Ossie: “Love, in the end, is the object of existence. Sex threads the needle that stitched we twain together, but only love could make time in the corset worthwhile. Sex is in a hurry, but the making of love always takes time.”

They affirmed one another via mutual admiration, adoration, making love and having good sex. Affirmation secures trust, whereas trust establishes “the basis of friendship,” according to Ossie. Such bonds grow from the self to the two to the many. As Ruby recalls, “you can love a sunset and watch a sunrise and help feed the hungry and protect the tribe, because you understand love and how it erupts from the deep quiet of ecstasy to the service of divine intentions.”

             In the end, Ossie and Ruby achieved oneness that’s the stuff of dreams and fairy tales. Only, it was real.  “I look back now, in praise and deep thanksgiving to you, Ruby, the woman I love, seeing not two of us, but one—not certain where I end and you begin. One thing is certain: The best of me has been subsidized by the best of what you are.”

            Together, the two served a family, a people, a community, a nation. Together, the two became one—nurturing and supporting, wishing, praying the best for each other, willing to give space for self-expression and exploration, coming together in passion for compassion, fueling common civic, social and cultural goals, all in fulfillment of an ancestral imperative to live well, love deeply, and to serve God as well as their fellow men and women.  That was Ruby and Ossie.