Love Is Stronger Than Death
Arthur Dobrin

10-A Wedding and a Funeral

Doug and Barbara planned to get married but they wanted to wait a while. While I was out of the country on sabbatical I received a letter from them. They said that during a routine examination the doctor found a mark on Doug's lung. They were waiting for further test results. A month later a second letter arrived. Doug had been operated on for the removal of a growth. They were eager for me to return so I could officiate at their marriage. We planned the ceremony for mid-October.

When I returned home toward the end of September, a group of friends met me at the airport. Doug and Barbara were conspicuously absent. I was told that Doug was in the hospital again. He had been having difficulty with his eyes. The doctors thought that his cancer had spread to his brain.

Doug and Barbara had decided that they couldn't wait for my return to get married. They wanted to be wed before Doug went to the hospital again. So they had gone to a judge that Friday before my return to become legally husband and wife.

Doug received a series of radiation treatments but they failed to check the malignant growth. His eyes continued to bother him until he could no longer keep them open. He lost his sense of balance and needed a cane, then a walker. In a few months he was confined to the house and finally to bed.

Several times Barbara expressed her disappointment at not having an Ethical Culture wedding ceremony. While it was important for them to be married, she felt that something was lacking. Doug too on various occasions said he wished that he could have had a humanist wedding ceremony. A quick ceremony in the judge's chambers did not satisfy either of them, although they could not say exactly what they felt was missing. No one any longer held out hope for his recovery. One night, while I sat with him and Barbara, he asked if I would perform a wedding service for them.

Less than a week later close friends and relatives came to their home. We arranged for the ceremony to take place in the sunroom - the place where Doug's hospital bed had been set up so he could overlook the garden. Doug lay in his bed, only partially conscious and coherent. The others stood around him and Barbara sat on the bedside, holding his hand. Each brought something to say, and we shared our thoughts and feelings with them.

When we finished, Doug, who had his eyes closed throughout the ceremony, said it was now his turn to speak. And he did.

"I am enfolded in an envelope filled with warmth and love," he said.

It was as though a veil had been lifted from him, as though for those brief moments the hand of death had been lifted from his body and he was transformed. He spoke to us about his love for Barbara and how much we all meant to him.

Surrounded by those most close to them, in the intimacy of their home, with the specter of death present and visible, they rededicated themselves to each other. Then Doug closed his eyes again to sleep.

Two weeks later he died at home. We arranged a memorial service for him at the Ethical Humanist meeting house. Whereas the wedding was private, in a home with but ten guests, the memorial service was communal, the meeting house filled with friends and relatives, acquaintances and colleagues. The memorial service emphasized the inevitability of death and loss and grief we all felt. But Doug had given something to each of us who knew him and that lives on through us. Others who were especially close to him spoke of his qualities of gentleness and humor. Members of the society who were musicians and knew that Doug had enjoyed jazz ended the service with the mellow, bittersweet "Mood Indigo."

That was the closing of an exhausting, yet exhilarating month - from the intense warmth of the wedding at a sickbed to the pathos of a memorial service for a man whose life ended shortly after his love began.

"We mutually needed to reaffirm our commitment," Barbara now reflects. "I felt the love of sharing with him, and the love and support of a group at the ceremony that was almost overwhelming. Without that I could probably not have had the strength to face what was inevitable. The peace and security and pleasure in Doug's participation in our marriage ceremony which he requested so close to his death gives me a memory that has and will continue to dispel the grief and depression which overtakes me when I remember how short but wonderful our time was.

"The memorial service was like the closing of a transparent cover of our book. The service was really for me to hear expressed what I felt about Doug and the comfort of others who cared and spoke so sensitively. It marked the close of a living relationship. Instead of closing off a dying person, I will forever be grateful for the very special way in which he is enfolded into my life.

"I can't express too strongly the importance of the inclusion of dying people, for them and the family, in life!"

Love is Stronger than Death

Arthur Dobrin

Copyright 1986 by Arthur Dobrin