Love Forever?

Karen & Charles Williams
married 42 years
My mom and dad

This picture of my mom and dad was taken Christmas of 2010, just a couple months before my mom died and a month before their 42nd wedding anniversary.

I'm not naive enough to think it was 42 years of bliss and perfection, but I know without a doubt they were hoping for much longer than the 42 years they had together. I'm sure over the years there were fights and threats, but when push came to shove they loved each other literally till death they did part.

Merton & Jennie Everhart
and baby Maggie
my grandparents
married almost 60 years

My grandparents were married almost sixty years. They were married in an era when you didn't just walk away when things got difficult. I've heard whispered stories of some hellish years my grandfather went through with my grandmother due to her mental illness. But until the very end he would say "I just need to stay alive one day longer than her." He was true to his word. He died about a month after my grandmother.

Don't all marriages start with hope and promises? And then the years go by and something happens. The hope fades and the promises are forgotten or sometimes outright broken. In today's throw away society, it's easier to throw it away then it is to do the hard work to fix it. Pay some court fees, sign the papers and be done with it.

I remember when my husband asked me to marry him. I was young, naive and thought I was oh so sophisticated at 20 years old. So I told him I was keeping my maiden name after we married. I've never forgotten his response, "but then we're not a real family."

And now, 23 years later, I have to make the decision whether to keep my married name or go back to my maiden name. Does it even matter? A name doesn't make a family. Hope, faith, kept promises and hard work keep a family together.

My name may or may not change. My family has been forever changed.  I have been forever changed.

Forever doesn't last as long anymore.