What Greater Gift Than Love?

"Love is what you've been through with somebody"  James Thurber

Who knows where these thoughts come from.  My mind must think too much, to look past my own troubles and see a better place.  A better place full of harmony and full of love.  This morning, I was thinking of an elderly couple that used to live across the street from (both have passed away).  The incident that I have on my mind occurred in the Fall 2002.  I was walking both my boys to school on a beautiful September morning; Brent was in second grade and Jeff was in kindergarten, and we were walking up our street on our way to Somerset Elementary School.  As we were walking, we saw our neighbors, Joe and Ellen Falk, coming towards us and they were doing a most unusual thing.  They were kicking a rock back and forth between themselves.  They were laughing and giggling and having a most wonderful time.  It all looked so innocent and yet a bit out of place for a couple that had been married for more than fifty years.  And yet what a glorious sight it was!  Here we are nearly eleven years later, and I have never forgotten it.  In my mind, I am sure they had been through fights galore, had there share of hell in raising three children, stressed over money and wondered just how were we going to pay for that car repair and still pay the power bill?  But what I saw that morning were two people who had been through all those wars and battles.  And they had emerged, more than 50 years later, with an unbreakable bond.  They were committed to each other, and to their marriage.  And they could still laugh and giggle like innocent children, and do something so simple as kick a rock back and forth down the street.  And it occurs to me, that is what love looks like, and it is an absolutely beautiful thing when done right.

For those of you that have a marriage like that...where you can still giggle and laugh and remember why you fell in love with your spouse in the first place, I congratulate you.  Never lose that.  What you have is truly special and not to be taken for granted.  I always thought that the best short essay on love was in the Bible, I Corinthians, chapter 13.  What that chapter tells us is that love is everything and that without love, everything else is nothing.  And I look back on Mr and Mrs Falk and I saw the face of love.  Yes it was old and wrinkled.  And it was a bit goofy and not the least bit ashamed of any of it.  And it was truly unbreakable.  What they went through together was love.

In the end Mr. Falk passed away in early 2004, and Mrs Falk passed away about a year later.  She was lost without him and probably died of a broken heart.  And as Edgar Allen Poe wrote in his poem, Annabel Lee, "but we loved with a love that was more than love..." (thank you Mrs. Willingham - my 7th grade English teacher).  That is the most extraordinary life of all..