January 24th, 2026
I visited my friend from the synagogue a couple days ago. We did what we always do: sit around, drink a beer or two, and commiserate. It is a cheap form of therapy, and it works. We try to meet for a session once a week if we can.
One of the topics in our discussion was my friend’s upcoming fortieth wedding anniversary. He was wondering out loud what to do to celebrate the occasion with his wife. Forty years together is not as big a deal as fifty, but it is still a major milestone, and it should be recognized as such. My wife, Karin, and I had our fortieth in August of 2024. I told my friend,
“Karin wanted us to get a blessing from our priest during Mass, so we did that.”
My friend thought that was absolutely hilarious. He was imagining an Orthodox rabbi he knew marrying him and his wife in a Jewish ceremony and he burst out laughing. As a note, his wife is not Jewish and has no intention of ever becoming Jewish. I can see how my example of how to commemorate a wedding would seem absurd.
However, my point in mentioning the blessing in church wasn’t really about celebrating the anniversary in a religious way. It was about celebrating the event in a communal way. Yes, Karin and I wanted the priest to pray over us, but we also wanted a public display. We wanted other people who knew us to share our joy (and surprise) at making it for forty years as a couple.
I could write a long essay on how to make a marriage (or any other type of relationship) work, but I would be talking out my ass. Honestly, I have no idea how Karin and I made it four decades. Our struggles were numerous and sometimes overwhelming. My words and actions often made it more difficult for us to stay together. Yet, somehow, here we are, still married after nearly forty-two years. It’s amazing.
I want to go back to the communal aspect of a relationship. For those who are film buffs, you might remember a scene from The Godfather where the young Michael Corleone marries his Sicilian bride in her home village. In the movie the couple has a wedding procession through the little town and are surrounded by boisterous well-wishers. I mention this because Karin and I had a similar experience on our wedding day.
We were married in a small centuries-old chapel in her hometown of Edelfingen in Germany. We walked at the front of a procession through Karin’s village from her parent’s home to the church. Friends and neighbors cheered for us. I had my pockets full of candy and pfennigs to toss to the little kids lining the Strasse. It was a communal event.
Why were the people shouting and waving? Well, Edelfingen was a sleepy little community, and our procession was a show, like having the circus come to town. On a deeper level, I really believe that the people gathered there cared about us. The unspoken message was, “What you are doing is important. It matters to us. You matter to us.”
American culture considers marriages and other intimate relationships to be private affairs that are nobody else’s business. To an extent that is true, however, to make a relationship work in the long term, outside support is needed. A couple usually cannot do it on their own. Other cultures make it clear that the health of a marriage has a powerful impact on the entire community. We have lost that sense of being part of a larger whole. In America it’s raw individualism with little thought for anybody else, and we are poorer for that.
Frank is Emptiness 