Love & Marriage...

A little over a month ago, I received a mail from my mother saying that my great Uncle Danny, in his mid-eighties, had passed away. Uncle Danny and my Aunt Eleanor are the only relatives I kept in touch with from my father's side. Eccentric is an understatement for Aunt El-- she made her clothes from old curtains and tablecloths, making her appear much like a hippy from the 60s trapped in the body of a 80 yr old woman. Their claim to fame was that they appeared in the 1996 Guinness Book of World Records for annually dressing in their original wedding attire and having their photo taken for their 54 years of marriage. A conversation does not pass without them mentioning their "celebrity status."

I have fond memories of them from my childhood, because though Aunt El surely can't dress to save her life, she could play a hell of a mean piano. Almost every Sunday afternoon when I was a child, maybe up until age 6 or 7, my mother would cook a huge pasta dinner with homemade tomato sauce, and Aunt El and Uncle Danny would come over. We'd gather around the piano-- Aunt El could play almost every old song by ear, and we'd have a big singalong-- mostly old Irish tunes or just plain old tunes. My sister would sing the loudest, and if you can believe it, back in the day before my karaoke diva days, I was too shy to sing at all. I think everyone thought I was too young to remember the words; but in fact, whenever someone couldn't remember a word or a verse to the song, I would say it-- I remembered every word-- but I was the little piano player (I think all I could play at that time was Chopsticks) and my sister was the singer. How funny!

Anyway, all of this background does have a point. I wrote to my Aunt Eleanor after I heard Uncle Danny died (I heard she wasn't doing so well), and I received a letter today that, if anything, renewed my hope in love and marriage, even though it was horribly depressing. The letter is quite repetitive, but one can't really expect the wisdom from an old widow in her mid-eighties to flow like an essay.

"Next month May 18th would have been our 55th wedding anniversary--getting dressed up in our original wedding clothes. Don't forget we are celebrities! We made the 1996 Book of Guinness with a picture of us in our original wedding outfits. What a beautiful life your Uncle Danny and I shared. We weren't like old married people-- we were still very much in love with each other. How I miss his arms around me! If and when you marry I wish God will give you the heaven on earth marriage your Uncle Danny and I had."

She repeated almost this same paragraph again earlier in the letter. I am 23 years old. This means they had been married more than twice the number of years I've even been alive. And they were still madly in love with each other. She says four times, "It's awful without him."
In a world where cynicism about marriage, love, and monogamy comes at you from every direction, it's refreshing to hear that somewhere, at sometime, "true love" does exist. And what a nice thought that someone, somewhere was kind enough to wish that for me.