When Love Trumps All

Jan Morris recently was voted 15th greatest British writer since the Second World War. Her award winning publications include the 1960 travel book Venice, which has never been out of print since it first rolled off the presses, and the history trilogy Pax Britannica. But her writing must take second place in this commentary to the romantic drama of her life.

Born James Humphrey Morris on October 2, 1926, the future Jan Morris became Britain’s leading journalist in the 1950s. After service in the 9th Queen’s Royal Lancers during the closing period of World War II, Morris was the Times correspondent who accompanied the British Mount Everest Expedition. Other prominent reporting followed. In many ways James Morris was much blessed. His successful career paralleled a successful marriage. In 1949 he had wed Elizabeth Tuckniss, and together they had five children.

But in 1964 James Morris began a medical transition that would culminate in a trip to Morocco in 1972, where he underwent sex reassignment surgery. James became Jan. Whatever interior struggles he had previously had in some ways at that time transitioned into her struggles to reformulate a life and a career.

Pax Britannica, begun by Morris while he was a man, was completed when she was a woman. And over time there followed a trove of other triumphs in literature, from travel books (The Matter of Wales, Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere) to essays (Among the Cities, O Canada!, Contact! A Book of Glimpses), history, fiction, and memoir.

The British government had forced Elizabeth and her husband to divorce following Jan’s transition. At the time same-sex unions were not permitted. But the couple never stopped living together and loving one another.  Recently, on May 14 this year, Elizabeth and Jan tied the knot again in a Britain where same-sex civil unions are now sanctioned.

“I made my marriage vows 59 years ago and still have them,” Elizabeth told the Evening Standard, following their government-sanctioned reuniting. “We are back together again officially. After Jan had a sex change we had to divorce. So there we were. It did not make any difference to me. We still had our family. We just carried on.”

For Elizabeth and Jan, now in their 80s, love has consistently trumped sexual identity, convention, and all of the sturm und drang that so pervasively accompany the politics of sexual expression. Here is a case of two humans loving one another over the course of a lifetime, everything else be damned.

Twenty-One

In 1989 my wife Diana and I had been married twenty-one years. We had met in high school and wed at age twenty. After two decades we had grown to a family of five with the addition of three children: a daughter in 1970, a son in 1976, and another son in 1987.

As part of our anniversary celebration I crafted a poem. It is so minimal as to be almost in code, but the chronology was ours. It was our own not-so-secret itinerary of twenty-one years.

Twenty-One

Two. One.

San Antonio,

Where we sketched the melody.

Who would have guessed?

Then? Emporia.

Now we are one.

Two. One.

Two in step.

A kind of dance, just we

Two.

Three. Four.

And then five. Amazing!

Sheboygan.

Amazing Zweibrücken.

Twenty-one years, stepping

In time.

Who would believe it?

I can give you a lyric.

The rhyme is clear too.

But I own no rhythm:

The rhythm is you.

Two years later, in 1991, Diana died during an asthma attack. A lifelong medical condition had suddenly turned vicious.

On August 22, 2012, another twenty-one years will have passed. It will be a sadder anniversary, marking the event of her death. In two decades I have moved on with my life, as one must. But I have never forgotten the two decades of joy Diana and I had together.

Twenty-One, Again

Two. One.

A decade, then another,

And one more year.

Who would have guessed?

Then? Well, that was

When the world ended,

Came crashing down.

Two became One.

Dance halted, music stopped.

And then—one life went on.

Twenty-one years, again,

Raced by.

Who would believe it?

Yet my empty arms

Still hold you,

And my aching heart

Still loves you.

Twenty-one then, twenty-one now,

But never time enough.