Maria and I went to a friend’s wedding yesterday and it was lovely, full of love, warmth, commitment and connection. We stayed into the evening to talk with friends, celebrate this union, and then we danced so much that my legs still hurt. Maria is a sweet and cheerful drunk, naturally and she was pretty wild on the dance floor. We had never danced together before, it was quite amazing.

When the service was over, Maria and I both turned to one another and said, almost at the same time, “let’s get married again.” We decided that our relationship was all about coming to life, and that is what has been happening these three quite wonderful years. I used to love to dance but can’t quite even remember the last time I did. Love does that to you. So we are re-committing ourselves to one another, stating our vows again, getting married again after three years. We will celebrate our marriage and our love and also our life on our new farm. We will get married at the new Bedlam Farm, probably in this barn, just as we did the first time in the big Bedlam Farm barn.

This will be a small and simple ceremony with our friends and those who have born patient witness to us. In one of the great delicious twists of living in a small town, we will get married by the town’s Lab-loving, charismatic undertaker, Elizabeth Ross, who loves her work but who has decided recently to bring love into the world as well as help people leave it well. Funerals are her work, she says, marriages are her play. She is very good at both.

Elizabeth likes to joke that she is happy to do make-up for weddings, as she knows how to do it. I am encouraging her to start up a blog – can you imagine? – and she is taking my “Art Of The Blog Course” at Hubbard Hall in Cambridge this Fall. Maria and I love Elizabeth, she has a wicked sense of humor and does not fit any of the stereotypes of an undertaker you might imagine. She performed the ceremony yesterday. She said she’d be delighted to marry Maria and me again, and we are delighted to have her do it. More details to come, we haven’t quite figured it all out yet, but we both believe strongly in re-commitment. I’d love to marry Maria a dozen times or so, a good reason to live long and be healthy.

A good marriage takes a lot of good and hard work, and I failed to do that work before, I will not fail to do it again. My marriage to Maria is all about coming to life, we chose life when we decided to be together, and we have had a lot of in in the past three years. I work hard at this marriage,  it is easier for Maria, who is viscerally sweet, loving and demonstrative. I need to change, I have, I am.  I see marriage as being like a beautiful Orchid or Dahlia, you have to nourish it every single day, and we do. We have already been through a lot together, and we have handled it together, every step of the way, an unimaginably beautiful thing for me, and I believe, for her.

I’m thinking a ceremony out in the pasture, with dogs, donkeys, chickens and sheep. What else?

Maria is one of the best things that has ever happened to me, and I am so lucky to be able to understand and experience love later in life. I’m so glad I didn’t listen to the world around me, aging is not all about talking to your doctor, long-term health insurance and squirreling money away for the long decline. It is about life and love as well.

So I am happy to announce this re-commitment, this renewal of vows and purpose, the ritual to mark the next phase of our lives. It just felt exactly right to both of us the second we thought of it together.