Marriage Vows

When people marry, they’re usually young. Assuming they take traditional wedding vows, they vow to remain married whether for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Youth tends to be forever optimistic, as it should be, so young people getting married never once think about worse or poorer or sickness. That’s certainly understandable, because they’re only thinking about all of the possibilities, hopes, and dreams that they face for the future.

Prior to becoming a Catholic, I had sired four sons. I was never married to their mothers. I actually never married until I was in my 50s, and my bride was eighteen years older than I. When I made those traditional vows I was certainly thinking of worse, poorer, and sickness. After all, I was no longer young, and life had taught me that it can be very harsh.

Apparently I was right to be considering worse, poorer, and sickness. Being the sort of man that I am, my wife has certainly seen me at my worse because of my fiery temper. Poorer kicked in when we were the victims of identity theft and lost about a half million dollars, failing to recover a penny of it. Then the sickness kicked in. The stress of losing everything we had caused me to have a debilitating stroke, and my wife had both a heart attack and a pulmonary embolism. But that’s only where the sickness part began, and I can tell you that it tests a man’s mettle.

After everything that happened to us, I began to witness a decline in my wife’s cognitive abilities. I read somewhere that a traumatic event can sometimes be the impetus for dementia. It appears to be true, at least in my wife’s case. She hasn’t yet begun to forget who I am, but she can’t remember the day, month, or year, and she asks me the same question as many as four times in an hour. She gets confused when trying to do something as simple as making a pot of coffee. She sometimes stops in mid-stride because she can’t remember what she was doing.

My wife was one of the most competent and organized women I’d ever known when we married. She’d always taken care of the finances and paid the bills. All I did was earn an income, take physical care of our property, and ate and slept. Now I do virtually everything. Though I’m permanently in a wheelchair while she’s ambulatory, she is almost completely dependent on me.

My wife and I chastely dated for thirteen years before we married. We built a lot of great memories both while dating and after we were married. Her happiness is all that’s really ever meant anything to me. 

Her favorite singer was the late George Jones. For her birthday a few months before Jones died, I surprised her with by taking her to a George Jones concert in Branson, Missouri, with the best seats in the house. I don’t remember any of the show because I just sat there watching my beloved wife transform into a seventeen year old girl again. Her glowing, happy face is what I most remember when this awful disease tries my patience. And no matter what happens, I’m resolved that my wife and I will be together in this house until one of us is gone—probably her first. At least I hope so, because she would be completely lost without me.

She certainly realizes that she has a problem. When it causes her anguish, she’ll sit on my lap in the wheelchair and cry while I hold her. In the insecurity caused by dementia, she often asks me while I’m holding her to please not “put her away”. I tell her that we’ll always be together, no matter what, while I hide my own tears. I do truly love my wife.

We live in a very disposable society. Virtually everything can be tossed into the trash today. Two things that are commonly disposed of today that should never be disposable are life and marriages. The divorce rate in this country continues to be 50%, if people today even bother with marriage. The Catholic divorce rate equals the national rate. When couples run into a problem, it’s easier to dispose of the marriage than to fight to keep it together. That’s so sad to me because it demonstrates how selfish and narcissistic Catholics have become. They seem to be no different than the prevailing culture.

Marriage—a sacramental marriage—is all about two people becoming one flesh. They’re one body together. Apparently modern Catholics don’t realize that because they’re notorious for not reading the Bible. 

If you got an ugly and embarrassing rash on your hand that had a terrible smell, and the very sight of it repulsed others who saw it, would you cut off your hand to be rid of it? That’s what divorce implies, you know. No, you’d do anything and everything you could to cure the problem causing that repulsive rash. You’d work at making things normal again until you either solved the problem or simply learned how to live with it. Right?

Then why in the world would any rational human being divide his or her flesh because the marriage developed a repulsively ugly, odorous rash? I’ll never be able to fix this ugly, repulsive rash called dementia, but where would either my wife or I be if I decided to divide our one flesh to be rid of it? No, marriage is forever. The summation of those traditional marriage vows is to face all of the good and the bad until “death do us part”.

There are people reading this right now who are considering divorce, or your marriage has lost all of the magic that made you tie the knot in the first place. Please work—fight—to fix the problem. Don’t severe your own flesh. Trust me, it’s worth the fight to save your marriage. And it does require a warrior’s spirit to fight for it. I know this from personal experience. Don’t be a coward. Fight! Don’t forfeit what should be held and cherished as your greatest possession in this life.