In just a few days, most of us in one way or another will celebrate Valentine's Day. This day has come to symbolize great romance, and lovers of all ages who have sweethearts or significant others in their lives will send flowers or cards, give candy, or in some other way show their love and adoration for their special person.
Love comes in many guises. There's the passionate, hormones-raging-out-of-control love of youngsters (think Romeo and Juliet); there's the love born of the desire for power and the preservation of a kingdom and a dynasty (Antony and Cleopatra come to mind here), and there is forbidden love that ends in sorrow (remember reading about Heloise and Abelard? He was castrated and she spent the rest of her life in a convent, thanks to their forbidden love affair).
Most of us do not experience these extremes. True love, not necessarily the kind we think about during Valentine's Day, consists of all sorts of emotions cemented into a relationship that contains love, respect, commitment, and a lot of tolerance, plus forgiving and forgetting all rolled into one, a love that takes a lifetime to perfect.
Let me tell you a true Valentine's story, one that to me embraces the meaning of a day set aside for love and for commemorating a romance that means sharing good times and bad ones, through darkness and through light.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, a young woman accepted a teaching job and moved to a new town. An only child and the daughter of a minister, she left home against her parent's wishes to spread her wings and try a new life in a new location. Soon after she arrived, she met an extremely handsome young man, a man born into a family of ten. Raised in poverty and somewhat of a hellion, this young man saw something special in the new teacher in town and began to court her. After a few years of dating, and against the wishes of the young woman's parents, who figured this brash young man was not good enough for their precious daughter, the couple wed.
Two months before the young man left for Europe to serve his country in what would become known as World War II, the couple had their first child, a much loved son. Mother and son spent the next three years waiting and praying for the safe return of the young father and husband. Their prayers answered, the war finally ended, allowing the young man to return home to his family. The couple spent the next half century building a life together; living and loving, enduring the typical ups and downs of any marriage, the hurts, resentments, disappointments and joys of a relationship that every committed couple faces over the course of a lifetime.
In due time, three more children arrived. The couple aged together, along with their family. They faced hardships, good times, bad times, upsetting times, and fabulous times together, and through it all both man and wife did the best they could for each other and their children. They made decisions together based on the information they had at hand, and faced the future together as a team. The man worked hard to provide for his family and the woman returned to her teaching as soon as the last child entered the first grade.
Years passed. The children grew up, became independent individuals, and moved away to the four corners of the country to begin their own lives. As the woman said late in her life to one of her children, "We spend years teaching you kids how to fly, to become independent, but we never dreamed you all would fly so far."
This couple, no longer young but now two older people, retired from the work force and regrouped. They rediscovered each other, did a lot of traveling to visit their children, and kept up their love for the other. Neighbors and friends marveled at these two old people who still held hands, still kissed each other hello and good bye, and weren't afraid to give their spouse a big hug in front of anyone who cared to watch. When neighbors drove them anywhere, the old man and the old lady still sat close to each other in the back seat where the man would put his arm around his beloved wife and hold her close.
The couple became very elderly. The man developed a form of dementia so the couple moved to a nursing home for assisted living. When her husband required more care than she could provide on her own and therefore had to be moved to a hospital bed, his wife moved to an apartment downstairs in the same building so she could spend her days, every day, with her dearly loved husband.
He died at the age of 91; five months later she followed him to the grave.
I know this is a true story, a story that began with the passion of Romeo and Juliet but matured into a deep love that lasted a lifetime. This couple gave birth to my brother, my two sisters, and myself.
This to me is a real Valentine's story, a work in progress that took a lifetime. My parents worked at their marriage, they never took anything for granted. They made a commitment to each other and did the best they could to honor that commitment. They faced whatever life threw at them head on and together. They shared in the disappointments and the triumphs that life hands to every one of us, they raised a family and saw each of their children move on and become individuals.
Life is rarely about the candy and roses we associate with Valentine's Day, but rather about the everyday situations that we don't think of as anything special until we look at them in retrospect and realize just what a wonderful, caring, supportive spouse we do or did have beside us.
No bard will immortalize my parents in a play that people will pay to watch two hundred years from now; no history books will mention my parents or their accomplishments, but these two people epitomize for me what Valentine's Day really stands for. They loved and supported each other through thick and thin. They had their disagreements, their hurts; they lost their tempers with each other and suffered disappointments, but I never in one moment of my life doubted their commitment to each other or to us, their children.
Happy Valentine's Day to all lovers everywhere, no matter your age or the stage that your love is in at this moment in time. Savor the moment, take this day to renew your commitment to your special person and to realize that we are all human and cannot achieve the status of the famous lovers of the ages, nor do we really want to. Enjoy the candy and the flowers, but appreciate your partner for him or herself, and celebrate your romance and life together.
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