My mother and her siblings threw a party to celebrate the fact that their parents have been married for 70 years. Which is impressive, I’m not denying that. Before the party started, my mom told me that her dad was going to give a speech, and asked me to record it. Sure, fine, whatever.
For transparency: Im not close to these grandparents or super fond of them. My maternal grandfather served as a pastor for most of his life, and they are incredibly religious. I wasn’t raised like that, and at this point I tolerate being around them for my mom’s sake.
My grandfather started off his speech by talking about meeting my grandmother in college, and how in their wedding vows she quoted a verse from the Bible about basically following him wherever he goes. This took about 5 minutes. He then proceeded to talk for 25 minutes about how he moved all over the Eastern US to different churches and what those experiences were like. He only mentioned my grandmother two other times: once to say that she had to go back to work while he went back to school for more training, and once when he mentioned that she played the piano at a hospital he worked at later in life. Meanwhile, he talked about how good it was to spread the word of Jesus and got choked up when talking about going prison ministry. At the end of his sermon (which is what it was), he quoted a passage from the wedding ceremony of one of my cousins, who got married earlier this year. And that was it.
Again, this is at a party to celebrate 70 years of marriage. At the end of a 30 minute speech, I didn’t know anything about my grandmother or their married life. When I got home I rewatched the recording to make sure I wasn’t misremembering something. I wasn’t. I did the math, and my grandmother was referenced in less than 30% of his speech. If you didn’t know where he was speaking, you might have thought it was at his retirement party.
I don’t know if it’s better or worse that my grandmother didn’t hear a word of this sermon. Her hearing is not good, she’s in the early stages of dementia, and she didn’t know he’d started talking at first. I doubt she heard a word he said.
I told my husband afterwards that, if we did make it to 70 years, I hope I would be mentioned in at least 50% of his speech. The whole thing was depressing to me, and I think even less of my grandfather now. For someone who made his whole life about speaking and “sharing lessons”, he couldn’t even be original when talking about marriage at the end of his sermon.
The only thing I take away from this is that the quality of a marriage is more important than the quantity. What good is 70 years of marriage if your partner can’t say a word about you beyond how you promised to follow them? Or if they show more emotion talking about doing prison ministry than on the day you married them? Hell, he talked about them losing their house in a fire early on in their marriage, and he didn’t say a word about my grandmother. He only talked about how the entire community “came together to rebuild the church” and how rewarding it was.
I don’t know how to end this beyond saying, this shouldn’t happen to any of us. Let this be a cautionary tale. Find someone who will talk about you at least 50% of their speech at an anniversary celebration. And try to be that person to them as well.
Comments
Religion poisons everything.
Such a good reminder that “number of years married” is only one of many, many potential signs of a good marriage. In fact, I think I only know a handful of marriages that are long that I would like to emulate in my own relationships. I know so many people (largely evangelical/religious) that have been married for a long time…but seem to hate each other. Or just stay together because that’s what they are supposed to do.
But guess what? There’s no prize at the end for “longest marriage” or “most suffering through it” or “most subservient wife.” I wish our society valued meaningful, healthy forms of love more than just people who’ve managed to keep living together despite hating it….
That’s depressing
She was his appliance. Nothing more.
I’ve never heard anybody give a speech extolling the virtues of their washing machine either, you only hear about it when it breaks or they need to replace it with a newer model, sometimes they might say how dependable it is, but just like any other appliance that serves them, it’s only notable when it isn’t doing its job 🙁
Stories like this renew my gladness that I opted out of marriage.
70 years married to a narcissist pastor. Poor woman.
Last religious wedding I went to, they did the whole thing where they ask all the married people to stand up, then get people to sit down until they figure out who’s been married the longest.
Once they identified the couple, they go up and give the husband (of course) the microphone and ask for his secret.
Dude opens with “Well, I had to travel a lot for work, so we didn’t see each other very much…”
I guess it’s good to know that the sort of pastor who makes a funeral 99% about Jesus and 1% about the deceased is at least consistent enough to do the same sort of thing for their own 70th anniversary party.
It’s about marriage so it should have been 100% about her and their family
It sounds like the church was his real wife…
I grew up up very religious, i left religion, but every gathering birth, marriage, death; turned into a proselytizing religious shit show. They never celebrated the baby, ppl in love or the memory of the dead, the only life they know is their religion
This is why I rarely cherish these long marriages. I learned that a lot of them consist in the wife carrying the load, forgiving cheating, being a shadow, surviving spousal abuse. Most of these long marriages are not something to look up to bc they were mostly shitty and the only reason they’re still married is bc of finances, or bc that’s what looks better in society.
Sounds like my great aunts funeral, all anybody talked about was how much they would miss the domestic services she provided them. She wasn’t even the main character of her own funeral.
Thanks for the warning. I mean that with all sincerity. This is a warning and I genuinely appreciate it.
How grossly depressing
Our Dad passed away 3 weeks before our parents 50th Anniversary. He’d been in hospice for a month. He “raged against the dying of” his light, he didn’t want to leave our Mom and she didn’t want him to keep suffering. They always took different paths to solving their problems but their end goals were always the same… except for the last one.
Love them both, together again for many years, now.
Have you ever asked your mother what she thought of their relationship? I’m so curious.
I come from a rather religious family, and there’s a thing that skips generations in the men on one side. My grandpa and his grandpa were religious and did some preaching, and so does my brother. I can tell you from my experience, that there’s no one on Earth who loves the sound of his own voice more than a man who feels “called” to preach. None of my family members ever bothered with the formal education, they just started preaching. I’m convinced that they mistake their own internal voice for the words of a God.
You are absolutely right, that we all deserve better than to be an afterthought in a man’s speech, where his most emotional moments are about himself.