For better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us do part. Sound familiar? They should. They’re the words I’m sure most of us heard in our wedding ceremony. I was thinking about them while listening to a song on a CD Mick gave me for Christmas.
Now I know I’m showing my age by admitting this but the CD was Kenny Rogers. I can just about how some of you younger ones groan at this point but please don’t stop reading. The song that particularly caught my ear was Through the Years, because the words echo so much of how I feel about marriage.
In a book I read recently the character, whose husband was away, said something along the lines of, ‘I guess that the thing when you’ve been married thirty one years is when they’re not there you don’t miss them, if they’re not there for a while.’
I read the line out to Mick and said, ’any comments?’
‘I would have thought it’s just the opposite,’ he said.
That was exactly what I’d thought too, which is probably why this Kenny Rogers song struck me. Because he says ‘I can’t remember when you weren’t there.’
As I think about my life, I can barely remember when Mick hasn’t been part of it. Like the song says we’ve been through lots of things together, good times and bad, financial struggles, illness and pain, loss of people we loved, but we’ve come through it all together.
To me that’s what marriage is all about sharing lives, sharing the important events and the trivial things that would mean nothing to anyone else, sharing the good times and the bad, trusting your spouse, listening to them, learning from them and always being glad to be with them, missing them if you’re apart. It’s learning to be strong together and belonging together. It’s working things out and learning what life is about- together. That’s what marriage is to me. What is marriage to you?
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