And the Greatest of These Is

My father and mother both had their 90th birthdays this year.  They have been married over 65 years and every time I see them together, when they kiss, hold hands or just help each other up and down a step, I'm reminded of little acts of love that run together to make lives of love.

We need more of those, or at least we need to talk about more of them.

It’s been several years, when Marty was recovering at St. Catherine's,  but I clearly remember seeing an older gentleman in the nursing home, he was  on a constant vigil for his wife who had clearly suffered a massive stroke.  He was there every day, morning, noon and night, staying right beside his wife.  

It was an act of love.

A woman from our church who has adopted her special needs grandson posted about their most recent travails at the hospital.  She detailed the very real palatable fear and pain and occasional joy of the young boy’s hospital stay.  She was by her son’s side, all the time, every day, for weeks, caring for him, advocating for him, laughing with him and crying tears of fear and pain with him.

 

An act of love.

My wife, every now and then, as I’m standing beside her bed preparing torture devices for her health care will occasionally reach out with her right hand and grab my butt, tweak me just enough to get my attention or cause me to jump.  She does it and then smiles, sometimes laughs. I ask her just what in the hell does she think she is doing.  She smiles, that old Marty smile, the one that reminds me of her love for me.

An act of love.

Marty has an old classmate I have become acquainted with through the miracle of social media (sometimes it’s a good thing).  She has a special needs daughter that was recently in the hospital for an extended period, apparently riding the knifes edge of recovery or death.  She stayed with her daughter, night and day, for weeks on end.  I’ve been there, it is misery, but she stayed and eventually took her daughter home, knowing sooner or late they would get to rinse and repeat.  

An act of love.

When Marty had surgery for her first stroke, the hemorrhagic one, the one that almost, almost killed her, they removed part of her skull to make room for the swelling of her brain.  I wish I had a picture, but back then I was too focused on Marty living to memorialize the recovery, but visualize a woman recovering from brain surgery and she is missing the front left part of her skull.  There was a huge indention that was unsafe and weird looking.  It had to be fixed so she had one more surgery.

They took Marty in to surgery and when she emerged, she had a brand-new prosthetic part of her head.  She looked better and the part would protect that lovely brain,  but the surgery, the anesthesia affected her cognitive functioning.  We had worked so damn hard getting her thinking back, her memory back, her id back from the first cerebral assault and there we were, home again, but back to the first base of recovery again.  

It was too much for me and I walked away from her as she lay in our bed at our home, I was broken, and I didn’t want her to see.  I went into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub and cried, I cried real tears of anger, frustration and despair.  As I sat there with my tears and misery in walks Marty, slowly but deliberately and she sits beside me on the tub and puts her arm around my shoulders, pulls me close and says, “It will be okay.”

An act of love.

I'm not a scholar of the scriptures by anyone's standards, but I have one thing kind of memorized from the Bible.  It’s where Jesus talks about some of the important stuff in all our lives.  He talks about how we should treat each other, he teaches about love, he says faith, hope and love are important but that love, love is the greatest of these things, the greatest of commandments.

I get that, I see that almost every day.  It’s hard sometimes, there are so many ways to read and hear and see things these days and too much of what we read, hear and see is untrue, hateful and harsh, the antithesis of that greatest commandment.

It’s there though, the stories are there, they are right in front of us because love is what we all want, we all crave, we all need.  It’s like the Beatles said….Love is all we need…..just look for it…..and then share it so more of us get to see it.

The Looks of Love

Marty loves me.  I know this.  I know because she says she does, I know by the way she looks at me, I know by what she does.  Marty loves me, as she says, “Very, very much.”

It’s a really nice thing to know you are loved; it is very simply the best thing about this care giving gig.  Married people need to know they are loved by their partners and too often we neglect the very simple but seminal detail, you are loved.  Me, I haven’t always known it. Me, I know it for sure today, I feel it every day from the woman I married.

It is the simple stuff that convinces me.  It is the way she looks at me when I am sliding my arms beneath hers to lift her from her chair.  She looks up at me, she looks at my eyes, my face, the growing dearth of hair on the crown of my head, she looks at me with soft blue eyes and I know I am loved by this amazing woman.  

I know her love by the way she takes her right hand and squeezes mine when I reach across the car as we drive down the road (assuming I’m not competing with the ubiquitous Diet Coke), it is the way she offers her cheek for a kiss and says “One more time” and then repeats that two or three times.  It is the way she grabs my arm as she is laying in her bed and I am giving her one last good night kiss or how she reaches out to goose me if I turn around too soon.  

Signs of love come at you in a lot of different ways.

I know her love is there when she swallows all of her pills without complaint or when she drinks the G2 Gator Aid that she doesn’t particularly like or when we prick her finger for blood or when we place the nebulizer mask on her or when we put the nasal cannula under her nose for oxygen or when I move her too fast from chair to chair and she say, “Ouch.”

   

Her willingness to handle all of the daily indignities without complaint, without balking is a singular message of her love for me.  She hates so much of that stuff, she hates being handled, I know she hates it, but I know she loves me more than she hates the procedures because she accepts what we do, because she knows how much harder my job would be if she complained or balked at the stuff we have to do.  She knows complaining would make the necessary parts of getting and giving care nightmarish.  She chooses to show her love.  It’s a big thing; it’s a big I Love You smack on the lips.

I am one of the fortunate ones that have always known love.  I knew my mother and father loved me, they showed me in so many different ways.  Too many don’t get that, I got that from my family from the time I was born.  And, somehow, some way, when Marty and I met, I knew she too would love me.  

Seeing love is really not that hard, you simply have to open your eyes and look for it.  It’s around you in the way a grandmother looks at a new granddaughter or a great-grandmother looks at her son’s brand new granddaughter.  I know what loving looks like.

I don’t ever wonder anymore if Marty loves me.  I have no doubts about how Marty feels about me, I know she loves me and that is a grand thing. 

And you know what else?  She is absolutely convinced that I love her too.  She’s right about that.