My nephew got married over a recent weekend and this is worthy of
note for a few reasons. He’s the first on my side of the family to get married
whereas all of my wife’s nieces and nephews are already married. I have three
siblings and between them they have five boys, no girls. My wife and I don’t
have any children which I will explain a little later.
When
Diane and I got married almost 34 years ago we thought we were being
progressive by having her hyphenate her last names to Graves-Lis, which she has
legally used since then. What I found out at this wedding is that many couples
are now being even more progressive by ditching their original last names for a
new combined last name that they will both use as well as for any children they
may have. That’s what my nephew Ben and his new bride Jenna did, combining Lis
and Farwell into Mr. & Mrs. Liswell.
That got
me thinking that it would have been cool if when Diane and I got married we had
both taken the last name of Gravelis, as in never being buried. Or better yet,
since there are no real rules for combining or creating new last names what if
we go with the “vanity plate” model and do something like Edmund & Diane
Arelove or Mr. & Mrs. Sospecial or how about Diane & Edmund Thegreat.
But
seriously, I think what Ben and Jenna did in creating a new last name is very
sweet and also smart in that it shows how committed they are to having an equal
marriage. I wish them all the best.
Does it
bother me that there is one less chance for the Lis name to be carried on? Not
really, since I made the choice years ago not to have children and knew that my
personal bloodline would stop with me. Plus what’s in a name anyway? I don’t
know the exact details of how my family got the name Lis, what I do know is
that Lis is the translation for Fox in Polish. My dad also told me when I was
younger that some of his relatives used the German translation of Fox which is
spelled Fuchs and sounds like what you think it sounds like.
So I
guess I could change my name to Fox but I don’t think anyone has ever thought
of me as a fox. Plus then I couldn’t use my silly puns like “ignorance is Lis”
or my newest one, “Lis is more”.
OK,
enough about names, let’s get back to the wedding. Ben and Jenna are a
beautiful, smart, healthy, caring couple. They are both in their late twenties,
Cal-Poly graduates, both working at a large accounting firm and living in San
Francisco. Their futures so bright everyone around them needs to wear shades. Same
goes for the large contingent of millennial friends, schoolmates, and coworkers
that were in attendance, they looked ready to conquer the world.
At one
point during the reception I looked around the room at all the young people
talking, laughing, drinking, and having a great time. I leaned over to Diane
and said something to the nature of them having their whole lives ahead of
them, she replied in a whisper, “not all of them”. It was like a reality punch
to the gut and I knew exactly what she was thinking. It wasn’t about all the
young people around us it was about Julia from Winters, another beautiful,
smart, and caring millennial who has no future, only a past because she died
last week in a tragic accident.
That’s
kind of the Yin and Yang of life. You can be in the middle of a joyous occasion
and think of something sad or I’ve been to sad funerals where someone will say
or do something funny and you start laughing. There is such a fine emotional
line between what we are feeling at any given moment or situation that
sometimes you just have to say screw it, I feel what I feel and there’s no
point in trying to control it.
To view the column in it's original form go to page 9 of the following link. Winters Express 6/14/18
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