Love is...(continued)

I realize Valentine's Day is behind us, but a chat with my mom, a movie, and an email from a friend have kept me thinking of Romantic Love and the different ways it can be expressed...especially those ways you don't anticipate when New Love first sets your heart on fire.

My mother's Valentine story made me laugh. My diabetic Daddy gave her a large box of Millionaire candies - delicious milk chocolate, caramel and pecans. Knowing Daddy has a terrific sweet tooth, Mama gallantly ate the majority of the box so that even if he snuck into it, there wouldn't be enough left for him to OD on sugar. Sometimes self-sacrifice for love can be sweet...

Saturday night my Valentine Tom and I watched "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"...the movie  where Brad Pitt plays a character who is born an old man and dies a young baby. On the outside, anyway...on the inside he ages just like everyone else. But as interesting and creative as the reverse age concept was, that wasn't what got me crying near the end. No, what touched my heart were the scenes where the wife is dealing with her Alzheimer's stricken husband...caring for him so tenderly. She is the one I cried for, thinking of a friend who is caring for a husband with early onset Alzheimer's right now and remembering the sweet, loving notes she writes about him on Facebook...

I cried again today over an email from another friend, Jean. She told me that my recent blog posts, "What This Heart Holds" and "Love Is...", made her think of her own marriage and the tough, heartbreaking ways she and her husband ultimately showed their love for each other.  She gave me permission to share her story here...

"Late in July, 2003, Bill had his stroke.  He deteriorated fairly rapidly.  He had the stroke on Sat. morning and by Wed. night the doctor was advising me to sign a "do not resuscitate" statement.  It was the hardest thing I ever had to do and haunts me to this day, but I knew how he felt about feeding tubes and about keeping people alive when there was no hope for a meaningful life. He was no longer able to move or to talk.  My children wanted me to do it, and my son was with me when I did; he couldn't watch, though, walking over to the window, sobbing.  As I think back on it, that was my "love is" for him.

 

Nine days after his stroke, I had gone home at 9:30, exhausted.  Soon after I arrived home, they called me from the hospital and said he was very restless and threshing around in the bed and would I like to come.   Of course, I went in immediately.  When I got there, I picked up a Bible on the way in and went over to his bed and started to read to him from John:  "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me.  In my Father's house are many mansions. . ."

 

He got very still and drifted into unconsciousness.  He died the next night, not having moved a muscle since I read to him.  The nurses at the hospital told me that they had seen that happen before, but never to that extent.  It means so much to me that he just refused to die or even to slip into a coma until I was with him.  That's love!"

 

Not what any of them expected when they first fell in love, but love just the same.