Thursday 10/17/2024
Nice day for a lot of reasons. Didn’t do much, well, went back to Gryphon and tried a couple of guitars, but I forgot to bring my checkbook so didn’t actually buy one, but picked one that I probably will buy. We’ll see. Saw a headline about Elon Musk contributing $75M to the Trump campaign, which inspired me to go and contribute another $1000 to the Harris campaign — and fuck you, Elon.
But I had a philosophical breakthrough, busting a problem that has baffled me for months. I refer you, gentle reader, to my First Year Review essay, linked at the top of this page. Scroll all the way down that lengthy document to the last heading, “Looking Ahead”, where I was working out the reasoning behind the firm decision that I would never have another romantic partner. No, don’t bother reading all that; I’ll summarize it here.
This was a decision I reached early in the bereavement process. To quote myself,
At my age, any anticipated pleasures of love are very much trumped by the anticipated pain [of bereavement]. Or, by the pain of the alternative, being the partner who goes through the dying process, dependent on the generous care of the other. Nope nope nope.
This actually made more and more sense as time went on. But on the other hand, there were internal forces and external events that were making me question it, and the internal mental argument was uncomfortable.
Here in a retirement home I see many sad examples; I can name four husbands whose wives are in the nursing side, or should be, and the husbands spend much of their time being with the disabled partner, who might be comatose, demented, or have multiple impairments from a stroke. Joanne and I were talking about some of these cases over dinner the other night and she said something like, “There ought to be some way to relieve that…” We just left it there; but today, her remark clicked with something else to give me a whole different picture of the possibilities of late-life romance.
First, what dawned on me this afternoon (reader, you might think it should have dawned on me a little sooner, but hey, I’m slow) was that the partners we see around Channing House, whose lives are being limited by their spouse’s failed health, all signed up for this. I mean that 40, 50, 60 years ago, these folks vowed “for better or for worse, in sickness and in health.” Today, spending their last years aiding a disabled spouse, they are simply fulfilling that vow. And they deserve great moral credit for doing so. And we really can’t fault them for holding to whatever they think their vows require.
But after that thought, came another: You don’t have to make that sort of commitment when entering into a partnership. And, late in life, you should not. But… what kind of commitment would you make? I started trying to imagine a variation of the classic marriage vow that didn’t just skip the “sickness or in health” part, but denied it, inverted it, flipped the script. Something like this,
In our health I rejoice in your companionship, but I want never to hold you back. When I am disabled in body or mind, my joy then will be in knowing you live on in health.
Suppose two people said that to each other. Would that make actual bereavement any better? Well, no; if you love somebody, and they die, you’ll suffer. But in the more common event, where one partner doesn’t die but their body fails, then I think yes, both people could feel better, even joyful, that they had previously made such an “un-commitment” vow.
Next morning update! It would be possible for the “un-commitment” to soften the pain of bereavement, at least. Read this new extended version:
In our health I rejoice in your companionship, but I will never hold you back. When I am disabled in body or mind, my joy then will be to know you live on in health; and I mean my final thought to be a glad “you live!”
Oh, man, that makes me tear up just reading it.
If two people said this to each other, I think the pain of the survivor would be softened when the other passes. Whether they did or didn’t actually have that final thought, they meant to, and that makes a huge difference on “survivor guilt”.
Codgerville 