long term

One of my favorite questions to ask my patients is "how did you two meet?"  Mix a little curiosity with a little romantic spirit with a little time to kill and you have the makings of a great story.


Will was joy riding with 3 other guys in his friend's new car.  The flat, straight roads of Florida were tempting them and they pushed way passed the speed limit.  Though none of them remember exactly what happened, the car ended up upside down.  One guy was thrown from the car, the other three had to cut out of the twisted steel.  Will was rushed to the nearest hospital with a collapsed lung, broken leg, broken arm and broken ribs.  He was stitched up and patched up and put in a hospital room.  Ten minutes later a new, pretty young nurse was assigned to him.  He said the minute she walked into his room he knew every broken bone was worth it.  It was love at first sight.  Sixty one years later I watched her smile as he told their story.


Don was not as poetic.  He shared the bare facts.  After high school he got a job as a dishwasher as Pisgah View Ranch.  It was a dude ranch where doctors and lawyers came to play.  Vera was a waitress.  They became friends.  He was drafted and spent three years in the army.  When he got out, he moved back to Asheville and looked Vera up.  They got married.  That was fifty two years ago.


Jane talked about riding the bus home from nursing training.  One day a handsome, older man got on and sat near her.  She saw him on the bus every day for two weeks before he asked her out.  It was after they were married that she found out he had only ridden the bus to get to know her.  He had a car that worked perfectly.  They have been riding in cars for the last forty six years.


Each one of these couple have one partner that is dying.  I am always inspired by them.  Not just by their romantic, old fashioned love stories.  I am moved by their commitments to be together til the end.  I am touched by the looks and touches of love between them that seem to supersede wrinkles and oxygen, walkers and bed pans.


Today is my anniversary.  A mere eighteen years by my patients' standards.  But it feels solid and substantial to me.  Maybe someday I will be telling a young chaplain about the big basketball player who sat directly in front of me in high school assembly.  How I looked at his blue eyes and blond curls and knew that I wanted to have his babies.  And maybe our long term love story will inspire her........