Something Blue

It is wedding season. This is usually a busy time for me but I haven’t had too many wedding gigs this year. My husband, on the other hand, has a new second job working for a caterer, so he has been the busy one most weekends, mixing drinks and serving meals. I do the singing at church part-not the reception part. One of my churches is an absolutely breathtaking 19th century gothic church in the heart of the Manayunk section of Philadelphia. I am always grateful to be in that glorious space making music.

I have done hundreds of weddings over the past 30 years.

Some have been funny- a reader mispronouncing Cymbal (with a hard K sound.)

“Without love, your voice is like a Kimball clanging.”

Or annoying- a groomsman winking at me and saying, “Nice singing, sweetheart.”

After all these years, it is easy for my mind to wander as I sit there in between songs, thinking, “Why so much makeup?” or “What should I make for dinner?”

But I mostly try to listen and be consciously present for these sacred ceremonies because as I once heard a very nice priest say:

We are a people of signs and symbols.

“Why do we do this? Why do we all come together in this church, wear the fancy stuff, say all the prayers? Why do we lift the cup, ring the bells? Because, we are a people of signs and symbols.”

I agree.
Humans seem to need tradition, ritual, and community as much as they need food and water.

“Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue“

I think back to my own wedding (exactly 25 years ago last week! ) and I get misty, remembering the two kids up on that altar at St. Francis of Assisi church, not knowing what was ahead- the glorious joys and the incalculable pains.

Life. Together.

I have heard many wedding sermons delivered by various priests. Like any professional, they range in skill! The weirdest sermon I ever heard was from a newly ordained priest who centered his homily on the upcoming wedding night, and how the couple would soon “consummate their love.” CRINGE. It went on for an uncomfortably long time!!

The most unhealthy advice I think I ever heard was, “From now on, you are responsible for your spouse’s happiness.” Whoah- co dependent, much?

Better was from a Rabbi who was concelebrating a wedding with a Catholic priest.

This rabbi said something like this, “There will be times when each of you must give more than you have and take less than you need.”

Yes. That is a beautiful way to describe the reality of a serious, committed (for life!) relationship. It is not consistently, if ever, 50/50.

Recently, I heard a particularly meaningful homily. The priest told a story of an old couple from his parish. He had visited the husband several times in his last weeks in the hospital and finally was called to the deathbed to give last rites. The man was lovingly surrounded by his children and grandchildren, and his bride (of nearly 60 years!), who attended tenderly to his every need. When the priest spoke with the wife a few weeks after her husband’s death, she said she didn’t know, yet, how to live without him. She had always felt like he was the one who took care of her. She recalled the decades of companionship, acts both mundane and heroic, that had sustained her in their marriage together. The priest, recalling the selfless care and patience that the wife had shown throughout the man’s illness and death, realized how hard the role reversal at the end must have been for the wife, and yet she had showed no resentment, made no complaint. He said that it occurred to him at that moment that marriage was not about learning to live together. It was about learning to die together. It’s not about who leaves the toothpaste cap off. It is about loving someone so much, you allow bits of your own needs and selfishness, your childish demands and your shallow desires to die away.

You die to your self.

What a blessing.

My husband and I celebrated our 25th anniversary on May 23rd. I am so grateful. I love him AND I like him. Our life has not been simple but who’s is?

The next day, May 24th, would have been the 15th wedding anniversary for my late friend, Katie and her husband, Adam. Katie and I had so much in common, we even chose the same time of year to get married!

June 6th will be another anniversary: it has been 4 years since Katie died from Leukemia. Lately, the weather in Philadelphia has been sublime- no humidity, bright sun, warm enough for shorts but chilly at night. This was exactly how it was in the two weeks leading up to Katie’s death in 2019 and like a muscle memory of sorts, I am, daily, flooded with memories and feelings from that painful and transcendent time.

Katie was loved and appreciated by so many people. She made everyone feel cared for and special. She loved company, so her death bed was continually surrounded by friends and family, former co-workers and the nurses and doctors who had grown to respect and love this unique person.

Her beloved, Adam, was a strong and loving companion. They had a happy and supportive marriage. They enjoyed and admired each other. She told me, once, that she liked his forearms. They were in love. Yet, from my perspective, it seemed that Katie could barely look at him in the weeks right before her death. When others came to bid their farewells, she would lock her famous light blue eyes with theirs, but for Adam, she seemed unable. Katie pulled together every last bit of strength she had to be with her 2 little boys on the last day they visited. She declined her pain medication for that visit so that she could be as present as possible. She was so wise, so kind and so selfless. But I watched several times as she seemed to turn her head away when Adam tried to talk to her.

In her last days, when she wasn’t even speaking, Adam spent the night next to her in her hospital bed.

Maybe Adam was the loss that even Katie couldn’t face.

The ironic blessing of a slow death is that eventually, it seems to me, that one loses the struggle to cling to life because one’s energy is so depleted and must be reserved for the last work of leaving this plane of existence. One by one, Katie let go of each of us but I think she knew that the loss of her future life with Adam was the cruelest loss of them all. Still, he accompanied her through this process with such courageous care, lying next to his diminished and battered lover as she breathed her last precious breaths.

I have a faith that tells me to trust that Katie is safe. A place was prepared for her. She is in the dwelling place of God. She is at peace. I choose to believe this although my human mind cannot quite comprehend what it means.

Last summer, Adam and the boys moved away to be near family and Adam is doing such a great job with these sweet and growing boys. Their faces carry Katie’s legacy as they each in their own unique way, seem to look exactly like her! Their life is full of family, friends, farms, nature, Cub Scouts. Katie would be so happy and proud.

I sing at fewer church weddings than I used to as people become less traditional and more secular. I know that everyone has a huge array of choices when it comes to ceremonies and vows but I have come to really appreciate and understand the wisdom of the simple and traditional vows that I still hear at the Catholic wedding Mass:

“I promise to be true to you, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you, and honor you, all the days of my life.”

Those words say it all.