...'till death do us part

I found my wedding vows last week. I probably hadn't seen them in twenty years.

I was looking through some old legal papers, deciding what I needed to keep and what I could toss, when I came across a large yellowed envelope that held our marriage license. They were at the bottom of that envelope, on a page stapled together with the rest of the notes from the wedding ceremony, neatly folded in thirds. Hand typed on a sheet of paper 5 1/2" by 8 1/2", they have my original editing marks in ink pen. Even back then I wanted to write tighter.

I told Mona I loved her and wanted her to be my wife. I promised to work with her and laugh with her. "I want to hold you when you need comfort," I vowed, "encourage you when you need strength and stand by you through the rough times along with the good."

That's the way it is with wedding vows, isn't it? We stand at the altar and pledge our love -- for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, until death parts us -- and we mean it. We really do. But we make those vows silently thinking "richer", "health" and "better". Eventually we learn there are times when it's poorer. There are times when it's sickness.

And there are times when it's worse.

Mona was in the dining room of the nursing home when I went to visit her today. I walked up to her and held out my hand. "Hi Sweetheart," I said. She looked at me for a moment, her face expressionless. "Are you Scott?" she asked. I smiled and told her I was and she said, "Good. I want to talk to you." We walked back to her room and had lunch together, spending the next 90 minutes in private. She does almost all the talking when we're together but her conversation is mostly four or five word phrases mixed in a way that rarely make sense. So I sit next to her and listen and smile a lot. And I love it when she leans over to kiss me.

I've often wondered if there's any good to be found in this, in the long, horrific illness that is Alzheimer's. And I realize that for me it comes back to my wedding vows. You see, I want my daughters and their husbands to know you can do this. You can go through impossibly difficult times as husband and wife and still stay together, still remain faithful, still remain deeply in love. And I think that's the key. No marriage escapes hardship -- no marriage -- but there are few bonds stronger than two people deeply in love.

"I give my life to be joined with yours," I told Mona as I concluded my wedding vows, "knowing we won't always agree but knowing I will always love you."

We were married February 1, 1975. Forty-one years ago. If, on the morning of our wedding, I'd known what was ahead, would I still have married her? There are several billion men on the face of the earth. I still can't believe that out of all the men He could have chosen, God let me be Mona's husband.

...To have and to hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, honor, and cherish, 'til death do us part.

I do.