masterwordsmith-unplugged

I am going to be very honest with you. I abhor rote learning of any sort hate memorizing anything - including marriage vows. When I got married a day before I turned 23 years ago, i remember asking my friend to drive around the church a few times while I went through my vows. Fifteen years later at a marriage renewal service, I had the same problem.

This was my marriage renewal vow that I wrote 15 years ago...and had difficulty memorizing!!!

"My beloved,
romance may fade, but true love endures.
I choose to truly love you.
with kindness, faithfulness, and respect,
through every circumstance that life may bring.

Because you are the treasure of my heart,
it will be my joy to support, encourage, comfort and defend you,
as we together face the coming days of sorrow and joy,
in sickness and in health,
in poverty and in wealth,
till death do us part.

And why I am talking about this tonight? It is about this part of the vow...."TILL DEATH DO US PART."

Death.

A stark, morbid, depressing word. Have you ever thought of it? I have. This evening, I thought about dad and how my stepmother just deteriorated in her health after he died and then she died four days before his first anniversary. Far too many times. I often wonder how I will cope if my hubby were to depart before me. I don't think I can take it. Honestly. I have tried to picture life as a widow. Of course I can proclaim I am an emancipated woman, but at the end of the day, I am also human, full of emotions - perhaps too much of it sometimes.

Very often, I tell my husband that I must depart before he does and he exclaims that it would be very selfish of me to make such a wish and to leave him in grief - his rationale - we will go in God's time.

If I had my way, I think I would want to die with my spouse. Dramatic?

As if by a stroke of fate, I came across this article in The New York Times:

The controversy over the ethical and legal issues surrounding assisted suicide for the terminally ill was thrown into stark relief on Tuesday with the announcement that one of Britain’s most distinguished orchestra conductors, Sir Edward Downes, had flown to Switzerland last week with his wife and joined her in drinking a lethal cocktail of barbiturates provided by an assisted-suicide clinic.

Although friends who spoke to the British news media said Sir Edward was not known to have been terminally ill, they said he wanted to die with his ailing wife, who had been his partner for more than half a century.

The couple’s children said in an interview with the London Evening Standard that on Tuesday of last week they accompanied their father, 85, and their mother, Joan, 74, on the flight from London to Zurich, where the Swiss group Dignitas helped arrange the suicides. On Friday, the children said, they watched, weeping, as their parents drank “a small quantity of clear liquid” before lying down on adjacent beds, holding hands.

“Within a couple of minutes they were asleep, and died within 10 minutes,” Caractacus Downes, the couple’s 41-year-old son, said in the interview after his return to Britain. “They wanted to be next to each other when they died.” He added, “It is a very civilized way to end your life, and I don’t understand why the legal position in this country doesn’t allow it.”

Sir Edward, who was described in a statement issued earlier on Tuesday by Mr. Downes and his sister, Boudicca, 39, as “almost blind and increasingly deaf,” was principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra from 1980 to 1991. He was also a conductor of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, where he led 950 performances over more than 50 years.

Lady Downes, who British newspapers said was in the final stages of terminal cancer, was a former ballet dancer, choreographer and television producer who devoted her later years to working as her husband’s assistant.

“After 54 happy years together, they decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems,” the Downes children said in their statement.

Scotland Yard said in a statement on Tuesday that it had been informed on Monday “that a man and a woman” from London had died in Switzerland, and that it was “looking into the circumstances.” The information that prompted the police inquiry appeared to have been given voluntarily by the Downes family, which, Caractacus Downes said, “didn’t want to be untruthful about what had happened.”

“Even if they arrest us and send us to prison, it would have made no difference because it is what our parents wanted,” he said.

Attempting suicide has not been a criminal offense in Britain since 1961, but assisting others to kill themselves is. But since the Zurich clinic run by Dignitas was established in 1998 under Swiss laws that allow clinics to provide lethal drugs, British authorities have effectively turned a blind eye to Britons who go there to die.

None of the family members and friends who have accompanied the 117 people living in Britain who have traveled to the Zurich clinic for help in ending their lives have been charged with an offense. Legal experts said it was unlikely that that would change in the Downes case.

But British news reports about the Downes’ suicides noted one factor that appeared to set the case apart from most others involving the Dignitas clinic: Sir Edward appeared not to have been terminally ill. There have been at least three other cases similar to the Downes’, in which a spouse who was not terminally ill chose to die with the other.

Sir Edward was known for his support for British composers and his passion for Prokofiev and Verdi. After studying at the Royal College of Music in London, he joined the Royal Opera House in 1952. His first assignment was prompting the soprano Maria Callas. He traveled widely as a conductor and became music director of the Australian Opera in the 1970s.

Friends of Sir Edward said that his decision to die with his wife did not surprise them. “Ted was completely rational,” said Richard Wigley, the general manager of the BBC Philharmonic. “So I can well imagine him, being so rational, saying, ‘It’s been great, so let’s end our lives together.’ ”

Jonathan Groves, Sir Edward’s manager, called their decision “typically brave and courageous.”

To read the rest of the article, please CLICK THIS LINK.

I am at the point of my life where I could be entering mid-life crisis even though I am still in my forties. When I meet up with old friends, we no longer talk about investments or our careers but about our blood pressure, cholesterol readings or uric acid problems. A number of classmates/varsity mates have already passed on and when I brush my hair each day, I realize the number of white hairs that are sprouting faster than I can say "Eureka."

Life is precious. So is our spouse - our children, parents, family and loved ones. Make each day count and live each day to the fullest for tomorrow and don't forget to tell them how much you love them everyday...just in case tomorrow never comes.

God bless you and yours with good health, love, joy, happiness and many precious moments together ...