All weddings are a little bit about death. If you said this to me a few months ago, I would have told you this was crazy and depressing, but I am coming to see that it is true. You are promising "as long as we both shall live," after all. The other day, Mary over at Marriageable said that she wanted to get married because she "wanted to be buried next to this man." That's what we are doing, really. Promising to get buried next to one other (figuratively, if not literally).
If death ever comes up in our relationship, I am either very practical ("We should get started writing a will") or totally irrational ("You are NOT allowed to die before me and you MUST live to be AT LEAST 94"). You see, I am a strange creature in that in my twenty-four years, the closest living thing to me to pass away has been my dog. So I feel especially ill-prepared to deal with death and that I must be the first to go between the two of us.
But just a minute ago, I was reading an old APW post (cause what else do you do when you are procrastinating?) and one of the commenters said this :
This reminds me of a bit in Committed (its kind of a sequel to Eat, Pray, Love) where the author talks about her grandfather digging the hole for his wife’s ashes- someday, one of you will have to wield the shovel for the other one.
Suddenly, burying your partner seemed almost like a privilege to me, to be the one that gets to watch over the other in death, honor their life on earth, take care of them even when they are gone.
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