Another clock ran out

Last year, Sandy told me about two men in California who wanted to marry before Alzheimer's claimed the opportunity for one of them to legally consent to marriage—or to even remember their 40-year relationship. We knew that the clock might be running out for us, so their anguish affected us personally. But beyond the need for marriage rights, we ached for them having to cope with dementia. Much of the joy in a longterm relationship comes from the connection of shared experience and memories. Obviously, this man would care for his partner even if he couldn't recognize him, but the relationship is completely changed at that point.

My grandfather had Alzheimer's. My grandmother told us about a time relatively early in the disease, when he was still living at home and sometimes knew what was going on. He woke in the middle of the night, and asked her these questions: "Are we married? Do we have children? Are we happy?"

Are we happy? That's the question that tore at my heart and shattered Sandy's composure. For more than a decade, I promised Sandy repeatedly that I would not allow her to continue to live if she didn't know from moment to moment whether she was or had been happy.

Last week, the man with Alzheimer's died, never having had the chance to marry his partner. And without the legal benefits that would have come from marriage, his survivor faces financial hardship because he can't access the pension that would have gone to a legal spouse.

We should have been married before
we went to Europe in 1998. Look how
young she was then!

I've read about a lot of  people with terminal cancer, and a common theme is the desire to marry before dying. Over and over again, I've read of heterosexual couples marrying when it's clear that the illness is serious. The strong impulse is there for same-sex couples too (we learned that when I had open heart surgery and when we received confirmation that Sandy had metastatic cancer), but too many of us don't have the opportunity to act on that impulse. A judge in Minnesota wrote eloquently about his frustration in not being able to fulfill that request equally.

Sandy and I should have been married about fourteen years ago, a few years into our relationship, when we decided the time was right for us. We should have been able to discuss it, come to a decision, set a date, negotiate an invitation list, and have all of the effort be about the wedding and commitment itself — not the political struggle. The date of our wedding should have been determined by the course of our relationship and not by the voters of Washington and of the country finally recognizing that our commitment was worthy.

There are couples all over the country who are hoping to marry before they run out of time for one reason or another. And all that stands between them and legal marriage are people — people who need to let go of the idea that their religious beliefs trump other people's lives.