By Lakhram Bhagirat
Their love, even after 33 years of marriage, can be felt in the room. It is larger than their combined presences and so loud that it speaks to the great relationship they have cultivated. Their love is so infectious that it inspires you to achieve just that.
However, that love was not easily achieved, rather they were forced to walk a road paved with broken bottles just to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Today they can sit together and say that the struggles were all worth it.
They now have their answer to the many times they asked the question “Is all of this really worth it?”
Spending over three decades working on understanding someone else and loving them unconditionally only makes you a better person and that is exactly how Pastor Raphael Jackman and his wife Hazel see themselves. They see themselves as two young at heart lovers but also as a couple who has been through more than their fair share of challenges as they navigate the often prickly path of marriage.
“Marriage is not about money, it is not totally wrapped up in love. It is a commitment made to each other with God being the soul. He is watching over to make sure that everything goes well. The promise you made in your vows must be upheld as the truth because you would be lying to man and God,” Pastor Raphael said when describing the institution of marriage.
His understanding of the institution comes after a lot of trials and errors. In his own words, “the Raphael Jackman we see now and hear now is not the same person that met with Hazel Ann Forde thirty-something years ago”.
Their story is one that seems as though it was plucked from a script for television. It starts when Pastor Raphael was just a young boy entering the world of work. He got a job at the then Guyana Airways Corporation as an Office Assistant/Messenger and Hazel was his coworker. However, she was in some ways his boss since she was the Secretary to the General Manager. Her position and the confidence she exuded somewhat intimidated Raphael but he already felt she was the one.
“While doing my duty as an Office Assistant I set eyes on this young lady and said ‘wow’ and I went home and told my cousins that I saw my wife. I did not say anything to her and my cousin asked where she was and I told him that she was working where I am working.”
A few months after that encounter, Raphael finally plucked up the courage to go and speak with Hazel about his attraction towards her. Because of their vastly different backgrounds, Hazel laughed at him since he was nothing she envisioned her boyfriend, and possibly husband, to be like.
“She said something to me that made me a dreamer even to this day. She said ‘little boy you are dreaming’ and I said wow. Now today, thirty-something years later, I am still dreaming because she is here with me.”
For Hazel, it was not an immediate attraction, rather, it took some time.
“The first interaction I never thought that anything would develop out of the relationship because he was not the type of guy I was looking for. There was not anything in him to make me feel he would be my boyfriend and eventually husband but things developed after. Like he said, it caused some stirs in our family especially mine but deep down inside I felt that he is Mr Right,” she said.
Nevertheless, their unimaginable journey began with them coming together to overcome the countless barriers that life would throw their way. Their faith, patience and resistance were tested and sometimes they passed with flying colours but other times they would fail and learn from their mistakes. Initially, they did not get married and Hazel would give birth to their first son, Yaphet, and when she became pregnant again with their second son, Yohan, they decided that it was time to get married.
Their wedding, however, was very unconventional at that time but it was everything they envisioned. Armed with two cases of rum, Raphael and Hazel made their way to the United States of America to get married. They would use the money from the rum to host their small wedding that was just family and close friends.
About five years into their marriage was when Raphael began to delve deeper into his religion and from then, he said, their life has been constantly turning around for the better. However, their marriage has not been without struggles.
“There were times when I wanted to know that I made the right decision or I tempted to walk but I stuck with the process and here we are today. I would not trade my marriage for anything in this world.”
Raphael came from a broken family in any sense. His parents separated and he had the responsibility of his four sisters and one brother since he was the eldest son at the time. He took on the responsibility and began working at the age of 17 and functioned as a father figure for his siblings so going into his marriage, he was somewhat experienced in the field.
“So coming into marriage and having to address some of the things that I have seen in my family, it helped and it hurt because I had both sides of the spectrum to deal with and I decided that I will not raise a failed family like what I came out of.”
However, Hazel was sheltered from all of those things that her new husband went through but she was not without her own demons. She had a broken relationship with her father and channelled her frustrations from that on to Raphael but he never relented.
“It has been turmoil. Sometimes it was very hard not in terms of finances but the relationship. It was rough and I always chasing him, telling him to go and leave but he stayed. We had physical and verbal fights and all sorts of things we went through.
The journey was rough but as we grew older we decided that this is it, for better or worse, till death and we working and for the last ten, fifteen years have been like the best of our marriage,” Hazel said while smiling in the direction of her Raphael.
They both said that marriage requires forgiveness. Many times Hazel has had to forgive Raphael and vice versa but instead of calling it quits, they worked through their differences. They made sure that at the end of the day they were stronger than they began.
Today, they are both part of the Marriages and Counselling Division at the First Assembly of God Church in Wortmanville. They offer couples counselling post-marriage and continue to impart their wisdom on couples.
“If you spend time together you build that relationship. We invested in spending quality time together and we are honest and transparent with each other,” Raphael said while noting that their love story is far from over.
“Better is ahead.”