She Was My World, but We Couldn’t Marry
nytimes.comAbout the protagonist - http://m.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=ari-j...
oh jesus, I missed that italicized bit at the end so opening this was like a kick in the stomach
Interesting to compare/contrast this story with Richard Feynman's first marriage.
Here author Ari Diaconis chooses NOT to marry Dunia Rkein due to his illness, uncertain survival prospect, and not wanting to burden her with his long-term care (if he survived)
Compare to Feynman, who married Arline Greenbaum despite the fact that she had severe tuberculosis and only a slim chance to survive.
Similar, but different. (Of course)
I wonder, is it better to never marry, or to lose the spouse shortly afterward? Is it easier or harder depending on the gender of the survivor (in our era, not the 1940s)?
Not to mention Tuberculosis is transmissible when Ari's ailment presumably was not.
Depends if you’d give them your inheritance.
I think you're close to the point - but I don't think it's about money.
If you love someone and they're dying, being married to them especially in the 40s makes things a lot easier for handling their affairs both before and after they die.
There's so many laws even now that aren't fixed to handle when people aren't married.
As someone with long term health conditions, it hangs in the back of your mind. I'm fortunate enough not to have to call mine "chronic", and I may (probably will) be blessed by the results of research from over a decade...
But it haunts me in every relationship I have, even if it's irrational.
Worth reading all the way to the very end.
Life is short.
I couldn't figure out why they couldn't marry. Choose not to, maybe, but "couldn't"?
In the US, medical issues can bankrupt people, even if they have insurance. If the couple married, his wife's income would be fair game to the hospitals and insurance companies.
I know a distant relative in the Midwest who's wife had a stroke. After about a year they made the difficult decision to get divorced because the aftercare was ruining them financially (she couldn't live at home). By divorcing, she became eligible for federal assistance, allowing her husband to keep a house over their children's heads.
This is the reality of healthcare in the US.
Did your relatives make a choice to get divorced?
From the article:
> We would be married but for my condition, which has placed a question mark at the end of nearly everything. Will experimental treatments eventually fix me? Can I contribute to a family? Is it fair to ask that Dunia sustain a lifetime of my poor health?
I should have clarified. I read the article, including that quote. That sounds like a choice to me. Other people, such as Arline Greenbaum, in similar circumstances make different choices. Two gay men Saudi Arabian men "can't" marry.
There's always some form of "choice". For instance, the two gay men could attempt to immigrate to country where they could marry. But at what price?
I don't know Ari's situation, but I can guess because I'm living through something similar. When he states that "we can't marry", I'm guessing he came to that conclusion after looking at the full bill.
When you go from being a person's partner to being a dependent, when you lose all sources of income (don't count on that social safety net), when you can do few to no fun things together anymore, it doesn't feel like much of a choice anymore.
It takes a special type of person to marry into that. And if you do marry, you need to live with the guilt of imprisoning them forever too. This kind of thing is not a spectator sport. Everyone participates, and suffers. That's "choice".
Also to keep in mind is that she'd be on the hook for his medical bills if they wed.
Looks like this really depends on the state and the contract. In this case, they were both in New York and it looks like under law she might have to pay his bills after he deceased.
That just makes it a financially sound choice.