Happy Anniversary

It's their wedding anniversary today.  They would have been married fifty-four years. I can't even begin to imagine what my dad is feeling today.  All sorts of things, no doubt.  I'm feeling something too.

I am told, that moments after my mother died, my father, with tears streaming down his face, reached under the blanket and took my mother's wedding band off her finger.  My dad placed that ring on my mother's finger nearly fifty-four years ago and before that moment it had never been off.   My Dad took the ring off his bride's finger.  They were no longer married, my father is no longer a married man.  Til' death did they part.

This thing called death changes everything.     

I, M take thee, F to be my wedded wife,
to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer,
in sickness or in health, to love and to cherish,
'til death do us part.