The problem of "Forever" 8/08

Current mood: blissful

"True love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen."-La Rochefoucauld

If you know me at all, you know my relationships have been, to say the least, tempestuous. For those who don't know me... I'm what you would call a "serial monagamist". The first man I ever, really ,seriously dated, I married. When the marriage ended thirteen years(and two children) later, I spent a blissful five months single before I met bachelor number two. We married two years later. Now separated we are working on redefining ourselves as "friends". NOT the friends-with-benefits kind. JUST FRIENDS.

Here is where my problem lies. My faith in the word FOREVER has been a little shaken. I'm not so sure it's something that is attainable. Are we as humans really capable of that kind of commitment? In caveman times two people made the commitment(usually to the best hunter/gatherer) and it lasted till a woolly mammoth ate your mate or you were burned in a freak fire starting incident. Usually a couple years. Therefore, forever really wasn't that long a time. The mate that was left just moved on to the next best hunter/gatherer and the circle of life continued.

These days its not so simple. Advances in modern medicine have made FOREVER a really...really long time. The average lifespan is roughly 85 - 90 years. If you get married at say twenty, thats sixty five years at the least. WITH ONE MATE!!??? The cumulative nineteen years that I've spent in wedded bliss are enough to give me pause...but geez.

Then, it happened. During work yesterday, I had to go to the post office and drop the mail. As I was going in, there was this older couple coming out. They were at the very least in their seventies. The husband was so gentle with his wife. She could barely walk, and he helped her down the four steps coming out of the building. I held the door for them both and they smiled at me and wished me a good afternoon. I watched them both slowly shuffle to their car. He opened the door for her and helped her inside and buckled her seat belt around her. He got in the car and they left, pausing to smile at me and wave beforehand.

Still I stood there. I had never seen anything so beautiful. That was real love folks. Not the movie love we see in films, not the kind we read about in trash novels. The real thing. Something so rare it glimmers like a diamond.

The care and concern they showed each other, the mutual respect, was awe inspiring. Each was the other's number one priority. When do you see that these days? I walked into the post office and deposited the mail and then went back to my car, preparing to finish my work errands with a trip to the bank. I didn't even know there were tears until the droplets hit my shirt.

Amazing how you can yearn for something that you really aren't even sure that you want. I don't know if I will ever attain what that couple had. I'd like to think that kind of partnership is possible for me. Just knowing that it really does exist gives me hope. For now, that's enough.