Of death and marriage

I was talking to my grandma the other day and we were discussing about niches because she is planning to move my grandfather's urn to St Anne's Church soon, where she bought a niche for herself and my grandfather.

She's 75 this year. Not in the most pink of health but she is relatively ok (relatively is well, relative). She spoke of how they had to break open the niche at St Anne's after she dies so that her ashes can be put together with my grandfather's and also how she would like them to write her name down now on the stone so that it will be easier in future, albeit in red to signify that she is still living. At that point, I was wondering if I would be talking about death like she was, with a certain ease and calm, if I were 75 myself.

I think a considerable number of people have some sort of a fear deep within them with regards to death. Perhaps not so much fear, maybe uncertainty. Or both. It's the whole unknown, the whole darkness of death that gets to people. We live in a world where we want to know everything, be able to predict everything, to anticipate everything. Is that perpetuating the whole 'fear' of death?

My grandma never went to school and is illiterate but is an intelligent lady, albeit with a temper and at times a certain unreasonable-ness. We moved on to the topic of marriage because we were discussing about the children of our neighbour and commented on how we haven't seen the mum in some time. She told me a story of how a friend's son got divorced and married again and had to give up the kid after re-marriage. She also said that the friend believed her son would get divorced again. My grandma's view towards divorce was one of disapproval. She commented along the lines of, why in the world did they get married in the first place if they were going to divorce; they are causing their children to suffer the consequences of their actions.

Given that children do not necessarily suffer as a result of having divorced parents, I think there's sthg about what she said that struck me. It was her whole view of the institution of marriage, which by the way, seems to be crumbling these days. Marriage is a choice. Working a marriage through is a choice as well. But convenience is the attitude in today's society. Look at the people from her time, how many couples actually go through divorce? Oh they were not given a choice, were discriminated against as women, believed they had to be subservient and etc, you may say. Yes, societal conditions have much changed. But where's the sense of responsibility, the sense of purpose in many couples today? The D word is brought up at the slightest hint of a storm. To some extent, don't you think that there is some wisdom in how the women tried to make their families work even if they had husbands who perhaps were drinking/unfaithful, or for whatever reason that the family wasn't working out? It's not only about the women these days, men too have a major role.

'Bring out that independent woman in you!', "feminists" may urge. I'm sorry but I think a lot of these "feminist" arguments are crap shit. Not that I don't believe in equality among sexes but many of them have flawed arguments and are not at all targetting simply equality. Seems that with all the progress, opening up of society, opportunities for education and all have not at all taught us the value of something as basic as the institution of marriage.