This morning I did an initial assessment at the hospital on an elderly lady in the hospital and she shared the most incredible love story with me that I just thought I'd post in hopes of bringing a smile to your faces! I asked her the general questions: how she gets around at home, if she has help bathing, cooking, cleaning, dressing, taking her medications, blah blah blah... and then I asked her who she lived with and her face lit up and she said "My sweetheart. My sweetheart of 40 years." Throughout the rest of the conversation whenever she would mention him, this 80 year old lady's face would light up and she would say, "He's my sweetheart. My sweetheart of 40 years." Finally as I was getting ready to leave she mentioned him again and I said, "How did you meet him?" And she said, "Oh honey you would never believe it....
...He was 12 years younger than me. I played in a band: bass guitar, guitar, and (some kind of horn... I forget), and he played guitar and piano. He walked in that day 40 years ago, spotted me and said to his friend "I'm going to marry that girl!" His friend said, "Well, you don't even know her!" And he said, "I know, but I will. I'm going to marry that girl." I had five children. I was a widow... they were ages 16 to 8 years old. He started talking to me and I brought him back to the house and the first child said, "He's cute, Momma!" The second asked him straight out, "What are your intentions with my Mother?" The third said, "Are you going to be my Daddy?" And the fourth said "We don't have a Dad." The fifth said, "I don't even remember him." And he said to me later, "I didn't even know what to say to that." He sat down on the sofa and two of my little girls crawled up on his lap, wrapped their arms around his neck and told him they wished he was their Daddy. He said right then to them that he would marry me and 5 weeks later we married and have been sweethearts ever since! And I had five children!! Five children... can you imagine that? What kind of a man would marry a woman with five children!?! And then... this is amazing. He took me to his home to meet his mother and we pulled in and I'd been there before! When I was 17 I had a friend who's mother was good friends with his mother and we went over to his house and there was the most precious little blonde haired blue eyed 6 year old there and I gave him a ride up on the basket of my bicycle. When I told him I'd been there before with my friend he said he'd remembered her and that once this brunette gave him a ride on her basket. He realized it was me and said, "Oh my goodness. I looked for that girl over and over after that day and swore I wouldn't marry until I found her. It was you!" And so he married me. And I love him. Lately I've been down. My sister died two weeks ago with COPD and I'm in the hospital now with COPD and have been struggling to breathe. I was praying yesterday down on myself, missing my sweetheart, and I realized this and am keeping this my motto for the rest of my life. You can adopt this motto too: "If you look at life through the eyes of love, you'll only see beauty."
Hearing her story sent goosebumps up and down my arms. Two people loving each other like that, still, after 40 years... It makes me excited to love. I want to have that. And I hope that she'll have a good many more days with her precious sweetheart before God calls her home.
"If you look at life through the eyes of love, you'll only see beauty."
No comments:
Post a Comment