Vows

I was just looking over some of the blog posts I wrote at the beginning of this journey, and I was reminded of some details I had forgotten. One post in particular, "Promises to Keep," really hit me just now. I remembered that I had promised my love many times that we would get married before my love died, and I've been struggling since the second tumor was found and my love has been struggling and declining so much with how to go about keeping that promise. There have been several times where I feared it was too late, that my love was declining too fast and that a wedding wouldn't be beneficial or make sense. I know that I will struggle significantly if I leave that very important promise unkept, but I want it to be meaningful for all involved as well. There have been several times where I've felt I've missed that opportunity. Then today, I went back and read that post, and through it I was reminded that I not only promised to marry my love before my love died, but that I promised to do so "no matter what." Remembering that, I feel that even though it will most likely not be exactly how we had imagined, I need to keep that promise.

A few months ago, my love asked me if my love was unable to walk, if I would push my love down the aisle at our wedding in a wheelchair. I said of course I would, and that I had actually been thinking about that and that I would want a chair placed by my love, so we could sit across from one another and look in each other's eyes. Now, my love will most likely not leave the bed, but I still intend to sit beside my love and hold my love's hands while I bear my soul through my vows.

Which is where the next challenge arises.... I've known all along that our wedding would not be all that traditional. I never hammered down many of the details of the ceremony, I figured that we would talk about all of that in time and decide together what it should look like. My love is now having more and more trouble communicating, and is awake less and less each day, so sitting down and talking about it, isn't all that plausible. I do know, though, that the idea of vows was quite important to my love. One day, when we were still living in Milwaukee, my love told me that my love had just begun writing one day, and realized part of the way through that what my love was writing were my love's vows to me. My love, unfortunately, then lost the random piece of paper that they were written on, and we haven't been able to find them since (although I was told that if I did find them, I was NOT allowed to read them). So, the task that lies before me is to write vows to my love.

The trouble is that I am having trouble knowing where to begin. I've never liked the idea of traditional vows that end in "'til death do us part" because I have always believed that love is eternal and that the promises I make at marriage should last forever. Now that death could physically part us more quickly than I had ever imagined, the idea of vows of eternal love are even more important. Sadly, knowing that is what I want is still not giving my creative process the kick in the pants I want it to. I suppose that, perhaps, this is one more area that really probably doesn't have to be perfect, even if I would like for it to be so. I probably need to just let go of the pressure I put on myself, and just say what I feel, though I imagine that will be somewhat easier said than done.

So yeah, any ideas would be appreciated, though please do not get offended if I don't necessarily incorporate all ideas I receive, these are my personal vows to the love of my life after all :).