LIFE’S LESSONS
By Henrylito D. Tacio
“We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don’t even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets! It’s time to put an end to this. It’s time for us to let ourselves be loved.” – C. JoyBell C
When it comes to love, there is no forever. That’s what some people tell us. But time and again, there are stories that defy such a claim. Consider this story that is being circulated in the social media:
My parents were married for 55 years. One morning, my mom was going downstairs to make dad breakfast, she had a heart attack and fell. My father picked her up as best he could and almost dragged her into the truck. At full speed, without respecting traffic lights, he drove her to the hospital.
When he arrived, the doctor pronounced “dead on arrival.” My father was totally devastated.
During the funeral, my father did not speak; his gaze was lost. He hardly cried. Even when we buried our mother, he seemed to be bewildered.
That night after burial, we – his children – joined him. In an atmosphere of pain and nostalgia, we remembered beautiful anecdotes and he asked my brother, a theologian, to tell him where Mom would be at that moment. My brother began to talk about life after death and guesses as to how and where she would be.
My father listened carefully. Suddenly, he asked us to take him to the cemetery. “Dad!” we chorused in unison, “it’s 11 at night, we can’t go to the cemetery right now!”
He raised his voice, and with a glazed look he said: “Don’t argue with me, please don’t argue with the man who just lost his wife of 55 years.”
There was a moment of respectful silence, we didn’t argue anymore. We went to the cemetery. With a flashlight we reached her grave.
My father sat down, prayed, and told his children: “It was 55 years… you know? No one can really talk about true love if they haven’t done life with a person.”
He paused and wiped his face.
“She and I, we were together in the good and in the bad,” he continued. “When I changed jobs, we packed up when we sold the house and moved. We shared the joy of seeing our children become parents, together we mourned the departure of loved ones, we prayed together in the waiting room of some hospitals, we supported each other in pain, we hugged one another each day, and we forgave mistakes.”
And then he paused and added, “Children, that’s all gone and I’m happy tonight. Do you know why I’m happy? Because she left before me. She didn’t have to go through the agony and pain of burying me, of being left alone after my departure. I will be the one to go through that, and I thank God for that. I love her so much that I wouldn’t have liked her to suffer…”
When my father finished speaking, my brothers and I had tears streaming down our faces. We hugged him and he comforted us, “It’s okay. We can go home. It’s been a good day.”
That night I understood what true love is. It is more than just romanticism and sex, it’s two people who stand beside one another, who are committed to one another – through all the good and bad that life throws at you.
Ah, love. One of the most talked about subjects. A lot of people tried to define it as they understand it. But the more they talked about it, the more it became incomprehensible. It’s inscrutable to say the least.
Consider this statement from Ranata Suzuki: “…the sad part is, that I will probably end up loving you without you for much longer than I loved you when I knew you. Some people might find that strange. But the truth of it is that the amount of love you feel for someone and the impact they have on you as a person, is in no way relative to the amount of time you have known them.”
To people who are in love, words just come without even thinking what those words are. “I long for you; I who usually longs without longing, as though I am unconscious and absorbed in neutrality and apathy, really, utterly long for every bit of you.” That’s what Franz Kafka wrote in Letters to Milena.
Some become poets in an instant. Benjamin Alire Saenz in Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World penned: “You’re every street I’ve ever walked. You’re the tree outside my window, you’re a sparrow as he flies. You’re the book that I am reading. You’re every poem I’ve ever loved.”
Mya Robarts has the same opinion. In The V Girl: A Coming of Age Story, she wrote: “Real love ought to be more like a tree and less like a flower. That’s the kind of love my parents had. Not so consuming and more everlasting. And you see that tree over there? Now it’s only showing green leaves, but during the spring it’s covered in flowers. Because as reliable as trees are, they can also speak of beauty and passion.”
Famous author, Neil Gaiman, tried to explain what love is in his novel, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones: “Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses.You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life.” – ###
