40 Love

In two weeks, Cat Daddy and I will have been married 40 years!

If  you were to ask me what it takes; what has to be invested to maintain wedding vows for 40 years, I'd tell you...40 years...of your life.

40 years y'all of  hard labor with no time off  for good behavior...

and no wish for parole.

I hope y'all are in the mood for a little light summer reading as I try to entertain y'all with different stories of labors of love!

Falling In Place

Why do all true love stories begin -- or end -- in a hospital?  Not in a daisy-filled meadow or on a warm white beach, but in a sterile and cold white hospital room.  Perhaps it's because life isn't always about being beautiful, but more about remembering to breathe in...and out.  Remembering too that while a candle-lit dinner, a dozen roses and sweet words are nice, love is forged and strengthened in the day-to-day reality of burnt meat loaves, endless chores, and in the unspoken of the endless waiting for medical test results.

The October night was clear and crisp: Its symphony a cacophony of her high heels on the pavement, clicking a staccato beat to the wailing sirens of an approaching ambulance and the hum of the hospital generators. Glancing down at the soft hand holding his, Jake was thankful Molly had given him one last chance. As they walked across the parking lot of the hospital,   suddenly and without warning, Jake’s mind raced back 40 years.  He remembered the first time he ever laid eyes on Molly as she stood outside the school band hall that September morning of their freshmen year.  All of 14 years old, she was a pretty girl with the whispered promise of the beautiful woman she would become.  Now, casting a sideways glance at her and seeing that promise fulfilled, Jack felt ashamed.  Penitent, he remembered how foolish and unbelievably stupid he had been three years later at the start of their senior year. That fall, with all the bravado only a 17 year old boy can possess, he had dumbly thought himself to be the catch of the county.  He cheated on her --more than once -- forcing her to walk away to salvage her pride.  Some ladies man all right.  How he had cried that June night shortly after graduation when she married someone else. His only excuse for losing her was poor at best. He was too young to know better ... or at least that's what Jack had told himself in the years that followed.

"How's your dad doing?" she asked, her voice breaking his reverie, returning him to the present. 
"Dad's doing what the doctors tell him to, but I'm more worried about Mom," he replied.  "She's wearing herself out.  She won't go home, eats like a bird, and worries constantly.  Molly, it's breaking my heart.  I can't remember them ever spending a night apart and even though Tim and I offer, she refuses to leave Dad...even for a night."

Stepping into the elevator that would take them to the hospital’s third floor, once again Jack felt the past drag at his mind. He thought about the second chance Molly had given him years ago. Who knew a simple invitation to a high school reunion would give him the opportunity to try and right a wrong?  Swallowing his pride, he had called Molly and was relieved to learn she was single again.  Apologizing for his stupidity 20 years earlier, he asked her to be his date for the reunion dance.  He could still recall the pride he had felt walking into the reunion with his high school sweetheart on his arm.  But somehow...some way...he had managed to blow it...again.  He was struggling now, trying to remember what idiotic thing he’d done at the reunion that caused her to walk out of his life once more, when the door to the elevator opened.

As they stepped out of the elevator and started down the hallway, they were startled to see nurses streaming out of his father's room.  Molly motioned for him to run ahead, telling him, "I'll catch up."

"What's happening?  What's wrong with my father?" he asked breathlessly,  needing the answer but scared to his core of what that answer might be.

"There appears to be a problem with one of his medications," the nurse replied just as the doctor stepped out of his father's room.

"An experimental medication we were trying with your father caused an adverse reaction akin to Alzheimer's.  This sometimes happens in Parkinson's. He was disoriented and hallucinatory with no recognition of his surroundings. We've administered a sedative and are working to correct the situation.  He is stable, but we'll continue to monitor him through the night. Hopefully Mr. Towns will be back to his normal self by morning."  As the doctor started to walk away, he stopped, turned and with a quick nod told Jack, "By the way,you've got one helluva mother in that room with your father."

At that moment, Molly caught up with Jack and silently took his hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze.  Puzzled and wanting to know more, but with the need to see his father first and foremost in his mind, they stepped into the room.  There would be time to give the doctor a what for later, but for now it was more important he judge for himself  his father was okay.

Walking into the room, the full portent of what was to be unfolding before their eyes, they could only turn and stare at each other speechless.  Unable to believe what he was witnessing, Jack’s first thought was, "Oh my gosh...this can't be real.  This only happens in the movies."   It was too surreal to be true.  Both of his parents lay on the small hospital bed, his father lying on his right side, moaning and shaking while Jack's mother lay beside her husband, the only man she had ever loved.  Her arms were wrapped tightly around him, holding on for dear life as he kept repeating, "Don't let me fall.  Please don't let me fall!"

"I never have and I never will," was the single promise whispered by the only woman he’d ever loved.

As Molly, tears in her eyes, softly laid a hand on his mother's back, Jack walked to the other side of the bed to see their faces.  His tiny, frail mother, reading the confusion and fear in her son's eyes whispered, "He's all right now, Jack.  He was afraid of falling out of the bed or off a cliff. I'm not sure which. I just thought it might help if he knew I was here, holding him. Please don't fret about me, hon. I'll rest better too, feeling him breathe beside me."  Giving Jack a weary, small smile, she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, continuing to hold the man she had promised "through sickness and health" with no intention of ever letting go.

Looking across the hospital bed that held 67 years of love unfailing and seeing his own 40 years of missteps, Jack’s eyes came to rest on Molly's tear-streaked face.  As Jack looked at her beautiful face, he fell into silent prayer.  "Lord, if it's true the third time's the charm, I only ask for one thing:  Please, Lord, if it be your will, the next time I feel myself falling let Molly be the one to hold me."

This is based on two beautiful couples I know.  Parts of the story are true; parts are what I see in my mind's eye when I'm with them.

All of it is based on love.