The marriage of the two senior women, Phyllis Siegal, 77, and Connie Kopelov, 85, should remind us all that sex is just a small part of marriage.
Although I don’t know what Phyllis and Connie do in their bedroom (and it’s none of my business), I do know that marriage is a union of more than just bed and body. More importantly it is a commitment to share bread and board.
Marriage is a bond that embraces every aspect of life in and out of the bedroom. To have and to hold, yes, but more importantly in serenity and turbulence: for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. It is a commitment to support the dreams and ideals of a life-partner.
Back in the 80′s when one married partner needed the supervised care of a retirement home, the only way the other partner could keep their home was through divorce.
My mother and step-father had a May-December marriage at a time when such unions raised eyebrows and hackles in the same way that same-sex marriages do for many people today. They married when he was 53 and she was 30. I was three-years old then, and my step father was the only “Dad” I ever knew. He bought my first bike and built my first school desk.
Dad was a proud man. Although he was a “Jack of all trades” he was also a master of many. He was a school bus driver and a rural mail carrier. His skill in carpentry sent many neighbors to our door. When he was in his seventies, one day my Mother looked out the window and saw him alone shingling a neighbor’s rooftop. Spikes of fear for his safety sent her to sit in another room of our house until he finished the job and came home.
It was about that time that we first noticed Dad was becoming forgetful and subject to mood swings. We chalked it up to old-age, but the problem was Alzheimers. I think the worst part of Alzheimers for the patient is that, at first, when they are lucid, they sometimes remember and are embarrassed by the things they do when they were not. I knew that Dad was aware of his problem when he told me that he had “found himself downtown” in his bedroom slippers. He was mortified. By the time my Dad was 85, he needed more care than my Mom could provide. As his mind failed, his physical condition also worsened.
So that my Mother could remain in their home and Dad could go to a retirement home, they agreed to divorce. Still, my Mother visited Dad every day and made sure that he was well treated and that his needs were well attended. Their marriage was only over on paper, not in spirit. Even so, when Dad passed away at the age of 88 it was that piece of paper that kept my Mother from carrying out his final wishes.
Although my Dad had told both my Mother and me that he wanted to be cremated, his surviving sisters wanted him buried and so he was. Dad’s sisters waved that divorce decree in front of my Mother as if it were their battle flag. They wouldn’t allow my Mother to help plan any part of Dad’s funeral, choose his casket, his headstone, or his final resting place.
In addition to the many decisions a surviving partner should have the right to make, today’s single couples have many other concerns. Health insurance is a huge one, but even larger are the decisions that only a legal partner can make in cases of debilitating illness or injury.
In cases where same-sex partners have children, whether from previous marriages or adoption, both partners need equality in their ability to be effective parents, whether the decision is providing for their children’s health care, their education, or just keeping their family together if one partner should die or become incapacitated.
For many couples, sex plays a small and, in some cases, no part of marriage. Health, impotence, and preference as well as age take the sex out of many marriages. It is only the small minded who put the emphasis on sex where it doesn’t belong.
