Bricks, Mortar, the Day of the Dead and Romance

This is our 40th wedding anniversary — the 43rd year of us living together. But Brit Griffin and I have never been much on anniversaries: no flowers, chocolates or romantic dinners. We’re not that kind.

And anyway, we were married on the Day of the Dead. Not the most romantic day of the year. But this day is special to us. It comes after the Celtic new year and just as we enter the darkest season.

Strange? Not really. We moved in together on Halloween Night - two scorpios. I was 19 and she was 22 — a dishwasher and a student with dreams of making the world a better place.

Three years later, we were married on November 2nd, the Day of the Dead.

“Nobody gets married on the Day of the Dead,” my mother said.

Well, we did.

Father Michael Czerny, a Jesuit social justice warrior (who is now the right-hand to Pope Leo), married us. He thought it was a perfect day. In giving us the marriage invocation, he called out, “God wants revolution.”

No doubt, he expected us to play our part. A revolution indeed. But what kind?

I wanted a revolution that takes down the powerful. But I didn’t want a revolution that left ordinary people behind. I was partial to the words of Dorothy Day:

Young people say, ‘What good can one person do? What is the sense of our small effort?’ They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the action of the present moment, but we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions… The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us.

When we got married we didn’t have two pennies to rub together. We were living in Toronto’s east end with homeless folks and guys coming out of prison. Our wedding celebration took place at the hall where we worked in a soup kitchen.

Brit agreed to marry me on one condition: In five years, we had to move from Toronto.

She held me to that promise. There was no real plan for where to move. We just drove around looking at towns that seemed like they might hold promise. We fell in love with Cobalt, Ontario, an old mining town that had seen better days.

We relocated just in time to watch all the mines shut down, the grocery store lock its doors and the local high school close. We had two baby girls and no money. We moved into a beat-up old mine manager’s house on an abandoned mine property.

After 35 years, we are still fixing it up. It is home. Just like the Gordon Lightfoot song:

“There’s a house on a hill
By a worn down, weathered old mill
In the valley below, where the river winds
There’s no such thing as bad times

I ain’t got a penny for cotton Jenny.”

Moving north caused major upheaval in our lives. There were some tough times, but we continued to lay the bricks and mix the mortar hoping that it would all hold together. For a while, I worked as a chimney sweep, carpenter and roofer. Brit and I then began publishing our own magazine, and I was eventually hired to work for a local First Nation. Brick by brick, I was getting a hands-on education in life.

The years passed, and we raised three incredible daughters. Wrote books. Argued and dreamed about how to be better people in the world. Somehow, I managed to serve seven terms in parliament.

Perhaps the biggest achievement was that, through all the changes and pressures, we managed to stay together.

When we met we were impulsive, cocky, idealistic, and deeply in love. So were all the couples that were part of our larger social world. Over the years, many drifted away from each other. At times, it felt like we were the last ones standing.

I don’t say that to act superior in any way. Forty years is a long time, and the wear and tear on hearts and ideals isn’t anything you can prepare for. But somehow, we managed to stick it out. The mortar held.

You’d think I’d have some great advice about love, but I don’t.

I think of the song by Bill Callahan where he plays the role of a chauffeur newly-weds. They ask if he can give any secrets about a successful marriage.

Well, I thought for a mile, as I drove with a smile
Then I said when you are dating, you only see each other
And the rest of us can go to hell
But when you are married, you’re married to the whole wide world
The rich, the poor
The sick and the well…

We drove on in silence for a spell
How my words had gone over, I couldn’t tell
Potent advice or preachy as hell?

I know how to talk about many things, but not love. I have never been comfortable discussing feelings, and metaphors for love usually sound trite. So let me go back to Dorothy Day, who used the most unromantic image of laying bricks to build a foundation on which love and community can rest.

In our case, we laid the bricks one at a time. The mortar held and the foundation walls were slowly built. In doing so, we raised a beautiful family and became active in the community, region and nation. Those walls continue to hold us together as the winds of insecurity, anger, and fear batter at our country’s door.

And as Bill Callahan sings, getting married wasn’t just for just each other. The foundation walls of love must be there to hold up others as well. Even the whole wide world if necessary.

Forty years married. 43 years living together. Still writing. Still talking into the evening about how to make a better world — and still celebrating the Day of the Dead.

Most of all, still waiting to see what happens next in this great adventure of ours.

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To find out what Brit is thinking about the state of the world, you can check out her Substack. The two of us will be speaking at the National Farmers Union in Moncton, New Brunswick, on November 19.

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