~snip~
Last month, a few days after they toasted the signing of New York State’s same-sex marriage law, Jacques Beaumont called an ambulance to the home he shares in Chelsea with Mr. Townsend. The two had been ill for some time, and increasingly reclusive. The ambulance took them both to Beth Israel Medical Center, on the East Side of Manhattan. It seemed only fitting that they were admitted together and — at Mr. Beaumont’s insistence — to the same room.
Mr. Beaumont was found to have leukemia. The prognosis was poor. Mr. Townsend had complications of his Parkinson’s disease. Faced with the prospect of their own mortality and separation after 39 years together, they asked the doctors to postpone Mr. Beaumont’s chemotherapy until — in a last grand gesture — they could get married.
“When he got sick, it changed everything,” Mr. Townsend said. “We said we must get married. It’s vitally important.”
~snip~
On the day of the wedding, Aug. 2, they arrived in a patient lounge in separate wheelchairs. There were no tuxedoes. Instead, the hospital provided matching white sweat pants and sweatshirts from its inventory and matching yellow rose boutonnieres.
They had the wedding in the lounge rather than the chapel, which Mr. Townsend said he felt no personal connection to. He did not miss the pomp. “I wanted to have the simplest, most heartfelt situation,” he said.
~snip~
With a dignity that defied the circumstances, the wedding couple clasped hands on the adjacent armrests of their wheelchairs and said their vows, which Mr. Beaumont tailored slightly to his diplomatic cadences, ending, “until we are parted by death, this I solemnly vow.”
~snip~
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/fashion/weddings/jacques-beaumont-and-richard-townsend-vows.html?pagewanted=1&ref=weddings
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