disaster and marriage

 My first born got married last June 11.  She and her husband arranged everything and made sure that we, as parents, won’t be bothered by any preparation.  All they required was our presence.  That was a far cry from the usual weddings my generation observed when parents practically arranged everything—from the wedding rites up to the reception—and shouldered all the expenses.  

 Actually, I hate ceremonies and the attendant formalities. 

That was principally the reason why I and my wife had a very unconventional wedding.   It was very selfish of me to deprive my wife her once in a lifetime walk down the aisle simply because I did not want to inconvenient our parents for a relationship that I was not sure, at that time, will really last. 

So, we came casually clad for our Catholic Church rites; no flowers, no flowing white dress for my bride.   We also did not bother to prepare a post wedding reception.

Where it not for my sister and her boyfriend, now her husband, we could have gone straight home from the Mexico parish church after the ceremony.  Thanks to them, we had a token celebratory lunch in one of the restaurants that were beginning to mushroom along the Olongapo-Gapan Road in San Fernando in 1987.  By we, I mean, just 12 people.  My parents, my sister, her boyfriend and her best friend, my mother’s youngest sister and her daughter, who acted as our ninang (godmother) and our female candle, veil and cord sponsor, respectively.  One of my father’s younger brothers was there too as our ninong (godfather), and his wife and my vice president-friend in the student council as male candle, veil and cord sponsor.  My wife’s family did not make it for reason I now can’t remember.

Although spared from the preparation, the only catch for me and my wife was to prepare for a brief—a minute long we were told—message during the post reception program.  What worried me, my wife too I supposed,  was what to tell our daughter and her husband in front of nearly 150 of their guests.  No matter how hard I tried the days before, no idea came to my mind.  I was therefore becoming more desperate as the minutes rapidly slipped away during the reception and still nada!  I was resigned to just say “Thank You” to all the guests for sharing their time with us on this momentous occasion.

But in the nick of time, the rescue came in the form of my son-in-law’s uncle, a professor at the University of Santo Tomas.  If he can compare marriage to driving a car, why can't I relate it with disaster risk reduction and management?  DRRM, being my current preoccupation!

Come to think of it, marriage can become forever if you do something similar to the four thematic areas of DRRM—prevention and mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery and rehabilitation.  This new perspective requires us to be proactive and anticipatory; that’s why the change from mere disaster management to disaster risk reduction and management.  You can’t manage disaster; it’s the disaster risks that you can by reducing them to avert the disasters from happening.

In old school disaster management, actions were undertaken only as soon as the disaster struck.  That’s when save and rescue and evacuation operations commenced, followed by relief distribution, and lastly, by rehabilitation.

But as our understanding of disasters deepens, we now focus on what can be done to lessen the chances of, if not completely avert, disasters from occurring.  Modern disaster management necessitates increasing the capacities of the people and their communities, on the one hand, and decreasing their vulnerabilities to hazards, on the other.  This two-pronged approach to disaster management is expected to substantially lessen disaster risks.

As in DRRM, we therefore have to put premium on the pre-separation/pre-break up stage of our married lives.

The operative word here is PROACTIVE.  To be one, newlyweds should anticipate the pitfalls that they’ll encounter on their way to FOREVER. 

As in DRRM, newlyweds should start building (emotional) structures and creating memories (knowledge and capacities) that will strengthen their relationships as soon as the wedding bells had quieted down.  They can take off from the structures and memories that were started way back when they were just lovers; the same structures and memories that principally moved them to take the plunge, so to speak.  These will comprise their mitigation and preparedness measures.

In DRRM, physical structures like rip-raps and levees will contain and, in some cases totally wipe out, the ill effects of floods.  Building infrastructures that complied with standards that were adopted in response to earlier disasters will also bring about better prevention and mitigation. 

In marriage, these may include real and other properties that will force couples to think twice before deciding to break up their unions because of the legal and financial complications associated with the dissolution of marriage itself and the division of conjugal properties.  Of course, the most important of these “physical structures and conjugal properties” are the children!  Your offspring will make dissolving your marriage not only financially draining but, most importantly, emotionally depleting as well.

In this time and age, of course, this old man doesn’t encourage couples to have lots of children. 

Preparedness measures in DRRM, on the other hand, include development of knowledge and capacities to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from, the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions.  In marriage, these include the created and resultant memories that like the emotional structures will contribute to making the couples keep their unions intact.

We should however avoid breaking up our marriage at all cost; save and rescue efforts may not suffice and will surely not be as effective as our efforts to save and rehabilitate lives in DRRM.

Granting that our “save and rescue efforts” proved successful, the “build back better” principle that currently guides efforts in DRRM reconstruction and rehabilitation thematic area is harder to accomplish in a broken marriage.  Just like a priceless glass figurine, you can never restore your marriage to its previous spotless, much less bring to a higher and better, state.

Well, this is just this old man naughty afterthought, if these are indeed true in marriage, does it mean that better emotional structures and shared memories with the third party were created in a union that ended in separation or divorce?  (30)