The Feuding "Wives" Finally Meet

What a delicious scenario that was last night plastered all over the newscasts.

Certainly worthy of a telenovela script.

The "legal wife" meeting the "partner until death". I'd be lying if I said I wasn't looking forward to or expecting a catfight.

(Photo courtesy of graphicshunt.com)

As we now say colloquially, ang haba ng hair ng lalaking pinag aawayan nila. (The man they're fighting over has such long hair - long hair being a metaphor for beauty worth inviting trouble.)

Could it be because of the - supposedly - stashed wealth, of stupendous proportions, that is really the "subject" of this "ownership" of the dead body?

Let's review the facts. (My thoughts in parentheses.)

"Legal wife" has annulment case with "Long Haired Man" pending in court. (That says to me the relationship between these two has long been kaput. It seems silly to be claiming in public "I'm the one, the one he loves" or some other hideous line like it when the last thing on record to immortalize your union is a filed case to destroy that union.)

"Long Haired Man" and "Partner Until Death" have been together for years until LHM's last breath. LHM made PUD the person in charge of his last wishes. (This is precisely the problem with legality: it sometimes - or should I say mostly - has no bearing on reality. Their partnership until death speaks powerfully to anyone - if you were dying, whose face would you want to see last? - but despite that, "legally", "Legal Wife" gets to issue imperious statements about morality. Excuse me while I get Barf Bag #143.)

"Partner Until Death" was granted sole custody of the remains in a foreign court for transport back home - where Long Haired Man's remains have been lying since the feuding "wives" want to do the Solomonic thing: cut the body in half. (How apropos: while the Bible is thought by some to be a morality manual, the Old Testament, as Jessica Zafra has pointed out, is rather laden with gore and violence.)

Statement of "Legal Wife": "As far as I'm concerned, she does not exist. In Catholicism, there is only one wife. I do not know why there is another one being talked about. It doesn't matter. I don't really know who she is and I don't care." (One, saying so much about a non existent matter - you care. Period. Second, I guess what gets "Legal Wife's" goat is that despite all the legal accoutrements she drapes herself in, nothing is so powerful a statement as two people holding hands until one of both of them meets Death.)

I loved how all of yesterday's drama - both women seated in front pews - took place inside a Catholic church. It's too rich not to appreciate the irony: annulments, having different partners - albeit serially, a supposed grab for wealth, pride in being recognized as "the" wife", snubbing each other publicly, airing of dirty laundry - all these sterling examples of "proper behavior" (let the eye-rolling commence), happening in a supposed place of unassailable morality. (Eyeballs falling out from the even-more-rapid eye-rolling.)

To quote Karen Walker: it's so rich, it's got to be fattening.

And so, another day goes by in the Republic of Hypocrisy.