John is visiting with his mother in the lounge of the nursing home. I’m sitting on the far side of the room reading a book, because I find that my presence is a distraction for her. Ruth was already living in LTC when we got married, and so she doesn’t really know who I am or why I am there. They just have better visits when I stay out of the picture.
There is a couple sitting close by- obviously they have been married a long time. I’m not trying to listen in, but I can’t help but overhear their conversation. It is not an easy one.
She came in after she had a fall, and she is staying there while she is evaluated by a specialist. She wants out (who can blame her?), and she can’t understand why she can’t go home with him. She suspects it’s because he doesn’t want her to come home, and she accuses him of conspiring with the doctors to keep her there. He denies this over and over again, with as much gentle patience and good humor as he can muster, well aware I suppose that this suspicion and inability to understand her situation is part of her dementia. He is less patient when she dismisses the competence of her female specialist doctor as a “woman who doesn’t know her head from her a**.
“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk.” He says firmly. His wife had been an OR nurse herself. So strange how this kind of disease can cause people to say things they would never have said “normally”.
I feel for this man and this woman- She is in the grip of a disease that will continue to rob her of her faculties, her memories, and eventually much of her personality. He is watching it happen, faithful, helpless, hurt by her hard words that he knows do not belong to the woman he married. But I don’t know these people, it’s not my place to say anything or even acknowledge this deeply personal conversation, even though he must know I can hear them. After several laps around the same conversation she becomes really irritated and tries another more aggressive tack.
“Well why on earth did you hook up with me then?” She asks, her voice rising in frustration.
“Why?...” he responds, taken slightly aback.
“Why did you hook up with me all those years ago- why, tell me right now”.
“Why did I hook up with you?”
“Yes, tell me right now, I want to know- WHY?”“Why?... Because you were the prettiest nurse around.” He tries to keep his tone light, but as soon as I hear his words I am instantly choked up, and silent tears flow freely down my face, hidden (thank God) behind my book. The emotions in those six words are so bittersweet- saying so much about the love this man carries for this woman still, even as they reveal something of what they have lost, and will continue to lose as time marches relentlessly on. I have been privileged to witness the enduring power of this love.
So how does she respond?
“Don’t say that!” She responds in a half horrified whisper. “Someone will hear you!”
Someone did. And it was Godsome.
1 Corinthians 13 “[Love] bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things…Love never ends”
They say you haven’t lived until you’ve stayed up all night and contemplated the universe. For the past two summers, I have enjoyed the indescribable pleasure of working at a small United Church camp in Northern Ontario. To this day, it remains the most positive experience of my life. For nearly two months, I lived in a secluded community setting, surrounded by a most pristine lake. As perfect as it sounds, childcare, while fun and rewarding, is inevitably physically draining, and almost every night I found my self ready for bed as soon as possible. 
