True love endures all things
/The Boston Herald
I don't know his name or where he comes from or where he goes when he leaves the hospital. I don't know if he has children, a job, a house, a car, a life that's more than a vigil. I know nothing about him except that he sits in a hospital chair in the afternoons beside a wife who cannot walk or talk or reach out even to touch his hand, a wife who may not even know he is there.
Sometimes he watches TV as he sits. Sometimes he just sits. He smiles when I walk past him. I smile back. Polite smiles, that's all. No joy in either. Shared sympathy. Unspoken "I'm sorrys."
When he smiles, he's a good-looking man. His wife has been ill for many years, someone says. This is only her most recent crisis. She has had several strokes. She has dementia. Her eyes are open but they see little now. I peek at her when he isn't there. Her dark hair is thin and matted from lying down all the time, her face sallow and slouched to one side. Her fingers are gnarled, her fingernails yellow. Sometimes she wrestles with her johnny, unsnaps it and twists until it is almost off. But then a nurse or an aide appears and puts it back on, straightens her sheets and covers her.
At the Shriner's Burn Institute, parents often tape photographs of what their children used to look like to their hospital beds so that all the people treating them will see them as they once were - before fire stole their smooth skin and untroubled youths. Pictures are a good idea, lots of pictures, on all hospital beds. A collage would allow strangers, doctors and nurses, the lady who brings meals, the priest who brings Communion, to know who someone was before illness took away a part of that life.
"Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." When couples marry, they hear these words spoken from the altar. They are important words: Love is patient. Love is kind. But they don't sound much different from the cliches of love: Love makes the world go round; love means never having to say you're sorry. And yet they are.
A few nights ago, my daughter rented "Chasing Amy," a comedy about a man who falls in love with a lesbian. Critics said it was clever, honest, fast-paced and funny. I wanted to like the film, but I didn't, not because the lesbian character had a voice high enough to substitute for a dog whistle, and not because the movie was nothing but non-stop blather about what people do in bed, but because this wasn't a love story at all. This was a story solely about sex. Every conversation among the characters, every joke, every remark, every second of every minute was all about sex, describing it, remembering it, anticipating it.
The guy did manage to get the girl for a while. He talked her into switching teams, as Seinfeld would say, but then, I guess, he lost her. That's what my daughter tells me. I called it quits in the middle because there was no tenderness in this movie, no shred of real affection. Nothing to redeem it. Maybe it was the timing, seeing the man in the afternoon, silently sitting next to his wife, contrasted with the inane chatter of two foolish characters Hollywood tells us are in love.
Love and sex. They're constantly getting mixed up. But they are different. Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is a devoted husband. Love endures all things.
