Love: Without an Expiration Date

While I stood chatting with an electrical contractor friend of mine today, he happened to get a call on his cell.   I excused myself for a moment when he identified the call as originating from his wife.  They did not talk for long.  As he ended the phone conversation, my friend expressed love for his wife.

He meant it.

I have known this man since high school.  Even then, he was dating the woman who is now his wife.  Smiling, I asked: “How long have you been married?”

“Thirty-seven years.”

“That’s nice.  You know, I read someplace just recently that true love lasts only three years.”   I shook my head.  “But I don’t believe that.”

“It is not true,” he said.  “Maybe infatuation lasts only three years.  But it takes three years to deeply understand the person you are with, I think.”

I agreed with him. 

As I approach within a stone-throw of the two year mark of losing my wife to cancer, I have encountered some of my most difficult hours.  Just this morning, thoughts of her progression down—from wobbling around using a cane to using a walker to me having to carry her from place to place—delivered me to tears.  I sat on my floor and sobbed for a while.

We were together for nearly thirty years.  She has been gone for nearly two.

I am not yet out of love for her.

--Mitchell Hegman