Forever And A Day

We met today after not seeing each other for almost a year. She was subdued and hesitant, and I waited for a pause in the conversation so I could ask her about what I was perceiving.

She told me of her brother, just a few years older than her, and how he’s been caring for his wife for the past few years after she had a series of massive strokes. Her sole caregiver, he has dedicated all of his energies to taking care of the lady he’d once courted, married, fathered children with, and built a home for.

But just a few weeks ago, he showed up at her door, wanting and needing to talk. Over coffee, the story came out. Cancer, a bad one. Advanced and probably inoperable, at least in a way that might matter. They cried together and asked all the questions that we ask when our true solitude in this quiet air becomes clear.

When we met today, she had just come from her brother’s house. He is too weak to do much for his wife, and so they lie in their bed next to each other, him talking quietly to her and comforting her, and her offering her soft maternal hand to the only man who has ever touched her.

While impeachment circuses fill the air with vulgar noise, and while self-important celebrities lecture their admirers on proper mindsets and behaviors, and while church authorities ignore the widows and fatherless in their own neighborhoods so that they can make mission trips to distant lands to minister to people who detest everything about them except their money, and while pharmaceutical companies manufacture crises and then sweep in with solutions to the crises, and while police officers kick down doors and plant boots on the backs of fathers’ necks on the basis of anonymous tips, and while newborn calves are torn to pieces by coyotes while two miles away a barely-literate master’s degree holder feeds her $1200 dog from a silver dish…while all these things are taking place, these two people hold each other’s hands and talk in quiet voices to each other, cherishing every memory and every moment and every distilled drop of pain in the bottle of their marriage.

My heart hurts for these dear ones. And what can I do for them? Promise to pray? Tell them that I’m thinking of them?

It is never enough. None of it is ever enough.

The whole encounter reminded me of an old Kathy Mattea song, which is always worth a listen.

~ S.K. Orr