My Friend's Wedding

I enjoyed my friend's wedding. I have hope for her. Her husband is French Canadian. The French Canadians believe more in children and family than us English speaking Canadians. She is Thai and not so far removed from her traditions to go for the 'legal lottery' of divorce, blaming the man, taking the winnings, and baksheeshing the lawyers and judges for the war of the roses. If the divorce court were my only encounter with Canadian justice I'd have long ago turned in my citizenship to become a terrorist against this unholy regime. We punish love in this country. We take advantage of the wounded.
Thankfully I've see the lawyers and judges working in their traditional milieu where the enemies are businesses and the casualities aren't the innoscent. My respect for the courts grows as I age seeing the need for lawyers to defen individuals against the state and to negotiate between different business interests. I also appreciate the need for justice to deal with criminals. But marriage is holy. Children are the children of God. Property of family is for the future of family not the interlopers and the courts.
I'm a slow learner. Three divorces and major set backs each time. Broken promises all round and the feeling in the end like some ship wrecked adventurer. There was no NorthWest Passage. Only now with global warming are seas unthawing. There were no maps for what my beloveds and I set out to do.
The consequence is 50 % divorce, no one knowing if the 'good' or 'bad' marriages by description or design survived. 5 year life expectancies the new shelf life. Yet only 5 years before me the average marriage lasted decades.
Feminists hated men and hated family. Social communists they called men the beougeosie and women the proletariat. John Lennon called 'women the nigger of the world' and we believed it. Before the publishing of the "Hazards of Being Male" and science prevailed over doctrine. Gender didn't matter if you were an agricultural worker. Racism was a slander since Indians had their casts and blacks their big black bossman and now North American Indians have their millionaire chiefs. It was always the haves and the have nots, the rich and the poor.
I was thankful to be born in Canada, son of hard working, Christian, law abiding parents of Scottish origin, believers in education and culture, lovers of the outdoors. I grew up on camping and competence. I was blessed.
I blamed myself for the failure of the marriages, blamed myself with the greatest of self loathing despite the women coming from broken families of addiction, divorce and suicide. The best defence is an offence. I was a provider and protecting. My sperm passed the test. I had no control over the abortions. And everyone was having abortions. Divorce and abortion were the macabre dance of the 80's and 90's. Death stalked us everywhere. Even today the ecologists tell us to kill ourselves to save the planet. Old and jaded I note that none of them are stepping forward to show the way. Even Suzuki would offer himself for euthanasia but blames the immigrants instead. Isolationism and fear are the backlash to the ideology and hope of the late 60's and 70's.
I went to so many weddings when I was young. I was the groom too many times but loved being best man, usher, photographer and friend. Then and today I still love the baptisms and christenings and occasional brisque. My father, now dead, said there'd been a time of funerals and then all his friends too were dead. In the end he longed desperately to join his wife and friend of 55 years, my mother.
It is family I pray for each morning. My brother and sister in law loom large in my loneliness. I am thoroughly amused by my nephews and their lives, thankful for Facebook that I can observe their youth. My dog is as always my friend. Friends are close too but not like those roommates and lovers, the ones I married who seemed like someone I'd known in another life and would again know. I miss them. Whatever irritation they gave, the horror and shame of divorce, their rage and terror, whatever once so frightened me is no longer present. I am weary.
In theatre we had a green room. After the play we laughed together rehashing the bright spots of our performances. I loved the theatre. I loved the psychodrama and dance. I love the leading ladies and the props. The costumes were tiring. Even today I wear clothing for others. At home I go naked or wear just shorts or sarong. In science fiction books I've been enthralled by the new material that breathes and clings like skin to the astonauts,
I loved that the families were all together last night. I loved seeing all the little children. It's like church. Children and babies come out and even the old people are welcome. I sat with academics. These gentle folk whose ways are the product of years of surviving the politics of universities. I once longed to return. I saw the school as a place to learn and leave. Now I'm old and the young never left. I am a different thing than those who were so social and sensitive. I felt their wisdom and kindness in their speech. I'm too wild with the real world. I've been too long in the field to mix with the gentle folk.
I feel like a warrior returned from the war who finds no peace in the home. I'm waiting to be sent back to the north. I'm working now on the frontier of the downtown eastside, ghetto medicine. I see no safety in my future, no security or quiet. The university is too far behind and a different "Glass Bead Game" than the terror of the edge I'm foolishly involved in. I loved the way they talked to students and spoke of the lives of their children. A professor told me he'd taken his sabbatical and taken his children on a tour of the world.
I winced. I'd wanted just that life, years before when my divorce ripped me out of the university and I headed out to the front to protect just such places. I left ex wives their in safety, always a provider and protector.
I am a doctor too. I give solace and care, though more and more, it's humor for we're all aging and the parts are wearing and the thought are slow in coming to terms with the losses and mortality. The fear each day is like nails on frozen panes of ice. I'm reminded years ago of people coming to find me to talk people out of trees on bad trips or bad acid.
Everything is going to be alright. All is well. This too shall pass. It doesn't make it better if you cut yourself. There's no bridge high enough. What makes you think there will be an end?
A wedding is a beginning. The community of family and friends gather for an ancient ceremony. We pray and give our blessing for the couple to prosper and proliferate. Maybe they will find peace when the greatest minds of Judaism and Islam continue to fight it out today in the Middle East. Even today the greatest Christian nation in the world, the United States of America, is on the verge or war, economic or other with China which was the last resort for communism and the religion of aetheism. Russia killed 80 million, china a hundred and twenty million and America is condemned for the imprisonment of a million. Things could always be better.
In Canada our problems rarely get beyond the French and the English. The Idle No More American Indian movement threatens to escallate from passive aggression to all out war. In Canadian marriages there is no sex as a consequence just teenagers who smoke more marijuana than any other Industrial nation, choosing illusion over reality, unwilling to come up with a solution now that the communes and love in and wars of their parents have failed to find a solution for living together peacefully. Better to talk about the environment. Canadian women are considered the best housekeepers, for after divorce they always get the house.
Today couples often live in their parents home, like the third world here, where real estate is beyond the price of the young and old men like me drive sportscars, the youth making a virtue of cycling, healthy and as fast some times as my motorcycles.
I liked that there was some 'voluntary' and not 'commercial' in the wedding, unique and a kind of 'party' that the couple gave for us all as we gathered and gifted them. I'd just been to a rock concert and there the corporate flavour of that very slick venue was so different from the wonderful event of great spaces and pauses and people not knowing what they were to do despite the best efforts of a beautiful master of ceremonies. It was herding cats at best. Gilbert my dog was there too barking to be joined by all his girlfriend, the beautiful and bright women who have cared for him over the years. It was a joyful event.
I loved seeing Aim and Marc tooking for each other, touching each other, exchanging rings and finally kissing in public. Tears came to my eyes. Hope springeth eternal.
The couple beside me had been together more than 40 years and those across from me some 30

The plane is leaving . I must go.


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