Why ‘until death do us part’ deserves more than a passing thought on our wedding day. Standing at the altar, we made a promise that included the words “until death do us part.”
At the time, death felt like a distant, abstract idea – something for our old age, decades down the track, after a lifetime of shared birthdays and grandchildren underfoot.
Most of us say those words without really letting them land. They’re simply part of the script, a solemn flourish on the way to the party. However, a wake-up call for us was to sit with a young woman who tragically lost her husband after just three months of marriage.
This has been a reminder of those lines in our vows, and about how little most of us ever talk about what it actually means.
The odds are closer than we think
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: facing early separation through death is not as remote as we like to think.
US Social Security actuarial tables show that a couple marrying in their late twenties face roughly a three per cent chance – something like 1 in 33 marriages – that one spouse will die within the first ten years of marriage.
It’s not the most likely outcome, but it’s far from a freak occurrence either. Add in illness, accident, and the unpredictability of life, and it becomes clear: this is a conversation that belongs in every marriage, not just the ones touched by tragedy.
And yet, how many newly married couples actually sit down and talk about it? We certainly didn’t, not in any real depth. It felt morbid, unromantic, almost like tempting fate. So, like most couples, we filed it away under “someday” and got on with choosing furniture and planning holidays.
Why we need this conversation
Avoiding this conversation doesn’t protect us from loss; it just leaves us less prepared for it, practically and spiritually.
Practical matters like wills, life insurance, guardianship of children, or simply knowing each other’s wishes for a funeral, are gifts we give each other precisely because we love each other.
Sorting these things out isn’t pessimism – it’s an act of care, freeing our spouse from having to make impossible decisions alone, in the fog of grief.
But there’s a deeper layer too, one that matters enormously for us as people of faith. Talking honestly about death invites us to talk about what we believe about it.
Do we believe – as our faith teaches – that the bond forged in marriage and the love poured out for each other is caught up into something eternal? Do we trust that love doesn’t simply end when a heart stops beating?
These aren’t questions to work out for the first time in a hospital corridor or at a graveside. They’re questions worth wrestling with together, now, while we still have the luxury of time.
We once ran a couples’ retreat where we asked them to reflect and then share together on the question: “If today was our last day together, what would I want to say to you”. There were lots of tears and intense conversation, and participants were overwhelmingly grateful for the opportunity.
Carrying each other toward eternity
None of this needs to be a heavy, one-off, sit-down summit.
- It might simply be a conversation over dinner: What matters most to you if I were the one who went first?
- It might be praying together for the grace to trust God with a future neither of us can control.
- It might be as simple as telling each other more often the things we’d want the other to know if we were gone.
None of us know how long we’ve been given. Some of us get sixty or more years together, and some a few months. Reflecting on “until death do us part” can help us to love deeply right now – to live and love in the present.
Not in the future nor in the past, but this very day. To make the most of every moment we have together.
Francine & Byron Pirola are the co-founders of www.smartloving.org
