...till death do us part.

My father lived a full life. He died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 89, a few years ago. A few moments before he passed away, he reached out to hold my mother's hand, but my mother shook it away and chided him for disturbing her sleep in the wee hours of the morning. Now, my mother regrets that deeply and laments over his sudden departure.

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My parents were happily married for over 50 years. In all my years with them, I saw them quarelled only once. So on the balance, they lived a happy marriage. It is therefore a pity that my mother did not respond to him during his last breath, his last touch to tell her he loves her and that he was leaving.

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It is easy in life to be overly busy and then take our love ones for granted. When that happens, communications starts to break down.

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One fine morning, I was with my friend and his family at a cafe in East Coast Park. The atmosphere seemed cordial until my friend asked his wife if she wanted coffee. "Since when did I have coffee for breakfast?!!" she replied angrily. Often arguments come from seemingly trivial matters like these. At this point, usually the man would turn logical and get very angry over his wife's pettiness, missing the real issues. As a bystander, it is easy to see that the real unhappiness is more subtle and more hidden, for it is definitely not about the 'coffee'.

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In this era of the Internet and mobile phones, everyone is working around the clock. Work no longer stops after 5pm. Many also travel overseas frequently. It is getting harder and harder to be a husband and a father, and to be a wife and a mother.

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However, between the genders, I think it is harder to be a 'modern woman'. A 'modern woman' now has to work like a man, think like a man and 'fight' like a man, and yet at the end of the day, would still like to go home to be 'sayang' (loved) by a man. But where is there the time to find this man, or to find the time (to be 'sayang')? Women libbers probably didn't figure this out before hand, did they?

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Since the liberation of women and the woman's charter, career prospects are getting more and more equal for women. Women now can aspire for their career ambitions, amid the tedium of getting their family life together.

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Given the chase of modern careers in unchaste environments, it is no surprise that divorces are up.

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Divorces are emotionally devastating. After years of being together (or in neglect), building a home and a family, it all come to a sharp end. As the divorce proceedings moves forward, the pain gets more aggravated for the couple, while their lawyers get paid in delight.

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Recently, my friend's wife decided to pack up and leave with their daughter (still a baby) in her arms. She has already found somewhere else to stay and is contesting for parental control of the baby and the majority of the house. Her lawyer has accused my friend of being a depressive and mentally unstable man with suicidal tendencies, and therefore not suited to have parental control over his daughter. (I certainly don't see any truth to that!) The way it goes, my friend will soon lose his house and have only limited access to his daughter. The last straw came when he found out that his wife already has another man for a while. Naturally, he was devastated!

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Most of us would know of more than a few people around us who are divorced. The more we hear of divorces, the less encouraging it is to get married, particularly for men, who feels that they tend to lose more in a divorce.

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If this trend persists, we will need a Men's Charter. Funny enough, this was mentioned during the coffee shop chat after the Bucky session on Saturday. Even counselling processes are mostly developed by women authors, with noble intentions no doubt, but skewed to how a woman thinks and her issues in marriages. I think it has come a time, the modern man needs to be better represented and protected.

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The caricature of the man sleeping with his secretary and breaking the marriage now needs a careful revisit. This is the type of fears many women have of their husbands. A lady friend once asked me, "Which cat doesn't like fish?" This, referring to "Which man doesn't like women?" I think she is absolutely right. Absolutely right in her world, since she considers herself to be 'fish', all men would surely be 'cats'. I also know that there are men I know of who does not consider women to be 'fish'. So are they 'cats'? hehe.

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I had asked a divorcee sometime ago on how she could possibly end her marriage with her ex-husband as he did not have any major vices, and that she had made her vow to God in the Catholic church to keep the marriage "in sickness or in health, till death do us part", and she simply replied, "...but that was a long time ago."

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So are vows meant to be eternal? Or must they go according to the seasonally adjusted optimism? Or is it really possible for marriages to be alive and happy 'till death do us part'? Or are divorces a result of our silly rapid urban lifestyle with all the distractions and weariness? Or is it because it is only now that more people are taking steps to end their marriages which had been dead long ago?

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However, when they started, there must be something that had attracted them to each other during courtship that had led to their marriages. Was it love? Or was it merely the hormones and sexual attraction and instinct to bear children and perpetuate the human species? Or was it the pleasures and fantasies of romantic love?

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Somehow, it must have sounded like a good idea at one point in time for them to get married, as a union of two souls. They say only heads can join, bodies can't. So as the head (consciousness) develop at different speeds and take different directions, they can no longer 'join' and sustain their living together, since bodies cannot join. That's spells the end of the marriage. Is this nature's process of entropy? After all, nothing is permanent! Nothing except Love. So does Love go on?

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At least love ought to be eternal, or is it? Is it possible to take a vow of love in the wedding ceremony and then grow to hate each other forever after that? :) Or does two persons who love each other necessarily need to stay married or live together, if it has already proven to be an unpleasant and impossible task? Isn't true love fully unconditional?

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As my thoughts about the ravages of 'love' and 'marriage' rolled in my mind, I overheard an innocent conversation between a 19 year old girl and a boy who is 16 year old at the back of the bus where I was. He is still green and curious about going out on dates, whilst she is older and already in a relationship and advising her younger friend. As she shared with him how being in a relationship is about, I am fascinated with their vibrance, hope, purity and innocence. Isn't this where most of us started with the ideals of marriage and family some time ago? :)

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