Marriage Story

 I hope I won't get into trouble, seeing as how I am writing this with the aid of many of the software and hardware bits and pieces developed over the past forty-five years by Microsoft. I feat that if I type the name Bill Gates that I might be struck down by some bolt out of the blue from my keyboard or a virus less virulent than COVID-19 but would nonetheless keep me from getting my point across. 

So far so good.

My point is this: Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced: big deal. Oh yes, I understand why for many this stacks up as a very big deal seeing as how it will cause a shift in the thinking of just who is the wealthiest person in America. The settlement involved here will likely divide up the billions of dollars that Bill and his wife Melinda have shared into smaller piles of billions. Splitting that fortune down the middle will leave them each with approximately sixty-five billion dollars each. And since the two of them have been doing their level best over the past twenty years to give all that money away, this redistribution of wealth may be the key to making that happen. 

Or not.

Money tends to make more money, and though their generosity has become somewhat legendary, neither Bill or Melinda will be scouring the neighborhood dumpsters for their foie gras anytime soon. But if you're worried about the end of the truly inspiring love story embodied by these two, stop. Their coupling began way back in the heady days of the late eighties, culminating in a private ceremony in Hawaii in 1994. After more than a quarter century of what we might assume was wedded bliss, they decided to call it quits. 

It happens all the time. 

What do most couples fight about? Money. "How much did you spend on that Winslow Homer?" And if you live in an earth-sheltered compound named Xanadu 2.0 that comes with an inscription of a quote from The Great Gatsby on the ceiling that reads, "He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it." It is extremely likely that some of their most heated discussions about whatever vast amount of money that needed to be shoveled this way or that took place beneath these words. For what it's worth, and that phrase has rarely been held up to this kind of ironic strain, Bill and his soon-to-be ex-wife have pledged to continue working together on philanthropic causes. Like public health. Vaccinations. Stuff like that. 

Which is nice. But I might suggest a new Gatsby quote for the ceiling: “So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight.”