a realistic romance

I just got off the phone with my stepmother. A woman who has been in my life for 20 plus years. A woman who has cared for me as a child of her own. A woman who has had to live with my very complicated father for a very, very, very long time.

Through a magnitude of problems, imperfections, sickness, financial instability, and everything else imaginable that accompanies twenty years of marriage... she has stood by him and him by her.

Tonight we discussed my Dad's recent diagnosis of Diabetes and a new heart condition that doctors are saying might take his life in as little as a year.

Having first hand knowledge what it is like to live with my father through sickness after sickness, and one death scare after another.... surgeries.....  medications.... doom...  dread...and a general negativity that robs him of being the person he could be... takes a special, patient type of person, that honestly I stopped trying to be a very long time ago. You build a numbness to the guilt that is inflicted by watching the man you are meant to look up to, live in a world of pain and uncertainty. You simply try to encourage, love, and offer any positive perspective that generally goes unheard.

This conversation with my Stepmother was different than others we have had. There was an honesty to it, a raw emotion... a tone to her voice that was lined with both strength and hopelessness. In that voice, I heard twenty years of love that had survived times of resentment, unhappiness, and wanting nothing more than leave and start over. A love that penetrated every word she spoke. Every word that held the seriousness of his situation... of her situation.

As she talked about "options", about doctors, about shots and pills and tests, and about his frustrations and discouragement with a body that is failing him. A body that was once strong. Powerful. A star athlete. A police officer, A coach. A body that now has trouble standing upright. A body that is now bruised from shots and bloated from pills and years of poor dietary choices.
-she cried
-she loved -she felt (and i felt) her words, her loss. She outlined that the only thing she could do was love. support. and move forward. She expressed, that through ALL of this, LOVE was the most important part of their lives.

-This type of love isn't glamorous. It isn't stylized or really even traditionally romantic. It is however, REAL. Its the honest love of two people who have been through a lifetime of challenges and stuck by each other because they felt that their love was worth it. At times it was questioned, but it lasted. It triumphed over arguments, slamming doors and squealing tires. tears shed. hurt inflicted. hearts wounded. pain felt. IT LASTED. It dripped from every word she spoke. From every tear i hid from her through the phone. Its a reality that was staggering.... and inspiring.

For my parents, a love that has been challenged on more occasions than can be added up is now, through pain and sickness, stronger than ever.


"to make this journey and not fall deeply in love, is to never live a life at all..."
Anthony Hopkins, Meet Joe Black