Let's talk about love. Not the fairy-tale kind or empty platitudes, but real love, and real stories. We intend to make this a regular "Good News Saturdays" feature.
So... got a story of your own? Drop us a line via "lovestories", here @ windsofchange.net. Regular Winds reader Bart Hall did, and his gripping, emotional story immediately became our Memorial Day weekend post:
At the age of 11 my mother, who grew up three blocks from my father in New Haven, saw him (then 13) at school one day and said to herself: "This is the boy I shall marry when he is a man." The Depression and the War intervened. Twice my father, a radar technician, was sole survivor of the sinking of his destroyer -- once by a typhoon, once by the Japanese.
This man, 180 cm tall (5' 11"), returned from the South Pacific full of tropical diseases and weighing little more than 55 kg (122 lb). Released after months in the VA hospital, he returned to New Haven and went to visit a friend who had served under him on his last wartime destroyer.
Waiting for Art to return, he passed the time chatting with Art's sister -- my mother. Eighteen years after deciding that this was the man for her, having waited prayerfully through the war in hopes he would return, she wed her beloved Randolph.
Fifty five years later, as my father was in the final stages of Alzheimer's, completely unable to care for himself in any fashion, I witnessed a moment I wish could be handed to every couple about to be married, or struggling in their marriage, just to remind them what it's all about. As my mother dressed my father, he reached out and tickled her. She said, "Oh, Randolph, don't be silly." In one of his last moments of lucidity he looked at her with the sweetest gaze I had ever seen between them and replied -- "I may be silly, but I still love you. Even if the bottom half is falling apart and the top half refuses to cooperate most of the time."
Too soon thereafter came the men from Groton in their dress whites. Too soon, I saluted the flag of the nation he loved and served so well. Too soon, taps played twice.
In sickness and in health, until we are parted by death.
Soon enough, united in victory.
Bart Hall
De Soto, Kansas
In sickness and in health, united in victory... along with the rest of our Greatest Generation. A toast to love, then - and to all of them.
OK, that really meant a lot to me. I love reading these stories. It gives me a sense of...life. Meaning. Purpose. I'm here to love my wife and care for her until my body gives out on me. Hopefully that will be after hers, and many decades from now.
Just like the wings of a peacock, real love can be so fascinating.