I’ve been married more than 50 years. And to the same woman. Which puts both her and me in a fairly rare category.
Jennifer’s father, a part-time evangelical minister, performed the wedding ceremony, in fact, at their house, which sits on Lake Minnetonka, in the western Minneapolis suburbs. It’s a pretty poshy place now, but way back when Max bought it on the cheap, about $15,000 and a used travel trailer. It had been a lodge in the 1930s and ’40s, and in fact the family called it “the lodge.” We were married in a big hall, with a picture window looking out over the lake.
As I recall, Max had us recite the standard marriage vows — no dithering, no quibbling, but “love and honor” if not, at his daughter’s insistence, “obey.” That would be taking it too far back into the patriarchal past. So it was “love and honor” we both vowed “till death do us part.”
Over the years, like most married couples, we have had ample occasion to question our union. There have been the usual frictions over love and money and the usual divergence of interests and hobbies. Jen is a homebody, a wonderful cook and entertainer, and not much interested in athletic or corporeal exercises. I’ve learned to be more outgoing, to lead hikes and bike rides, to socialize easily even with strangers.
But one of the things that really has challenged our marriage is that I’ve become, since my 50s, increasingly hard of hearing. Have had to ask for Jen, and others of course, to repeat what they said, sometimes several times. And this is exasperating for all concerned.
It occurred to me this morning, somehow (who knows how these poetic or lunatic associations occur), that our vows might just as easily have been “till deaf do us part.”
Well, I’ve been wearing hearing aids the last 15 years. If I am wearing them, I can hear pretty well. And heed pretty well what’s being asked or said.
It’s true that Jen’s paternal grandfather, Walt, was also quite hard of hearing. In his day, back in the 1970s, when Jen and I were married, he would solve the problem of his wife’s considerable shrewishness by simply winking at others in the room and turning his hearing aids way down or off.
That’s one way to tame the shrew, yes? Or get around her? Or around yourself and your limitations.
Jen and I are still together, almost 54 years post-wedding, and working even now on the deaf- and-death parting business. We’ve had occasion, recently, in our golden (crumbling) years to approach more nearly the mystery of death, what Henry James called “that distinguished [extinguishing?] thing.” There’ve been bouts of illness, that is, that remind us, pretty sharply, of “The undiscovered country from whose bourn / No traveler returns,” as Hamlet says).
What we say, in response, in defiance even, when possible, is that life continues to be good, and love, until deafness and death do us part.
