Love is bending

Real love is patient and it is kind.  It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It bends its humble knees in service to the object of its knowing, and the very best love is never held close but laid down where is has all this beautiful space to grow.



Their youth didn't know much of this love, but they said yes to a lifetime of figuring it out in 1969.
 
Time has a way of teaching if we are willing to wait, if we are willing to bend.

The good and bad of days fell away but they were faithful to love and to honor from that day forward.  The sun would rise and the sun would fall and each gifted day was cherished.  They could hardly believe that ten years had been lived out right.  Then twenty.  Thirty.  Forty and three.


 

 They held them all, these passing times, as they held onto each other.  They held their children four times over bending low moment into moment to show them all what love really means.


Thousands of suns later brings a day when the white coats enter the small room and tell them it's serious.  This clotting of blood in the tender parts of lungs can stop the blessed from living.  The room suddenly loses all of its air, and the suffocating news keeps them both from breathing in that moment.

They know now what old love is, and they hold onto hands that have served one another selfless.  They know that forty three years is not enough time of giving it all to one, and they know that all of their tomorrows are never promised. 

She calls him that night as he lays between sterile sheets.  Her voice wavers "Papa?  I love you."  He smiles his sentiment and vows that though they are apart he will always be there, right there holding onto her heart.  They feel it all, this promised pain of saying goodbye in their good nights as they sleep restless in beds without the other. 

For now, tomorrow comes with another brilliant sun, and they are still bending low to hold onto one another if even for another fleeting moment.

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