the truest love

He pushed her wheelchair across the parking deck towards the elevator.  She was in pain, with every little bump across the concrete sending a shudder through her wilting body.  It was difficult to mistake the tear that rested at the corner of his eye.  But he wouldn’t breakdown in front of her.  Not here.  He was there to do what she had done her entire life.  Steady things.  He was the voice, the preacher, the loud son of Mableton, Georgia.  She was the rock.  Quiet and reserved.  The anchor that allowed him to be what he was.  A scoundrel turned pastor.  A man of faith that was now having his own faith tested.

It came quick and painful.  A misdiagnosis, time wasted as her body succumbed.  It was Cancer.  And in 1986 the factors just didn’t add positive.  But even as the final result was painted rather clear, the path to her passing has only in recent years come into focus for me.

In 2007 I said goodbye to him.  He was the man I loved more than anyone in the universe.  More than I could even show on that day.  But in all this time I’ve acknowledged him, I’ve often kept her a mystery.  Not willing to tell this tale.  But it is a beautiful glimpse at their real story.  The truest love I have ever seen.

I never understood exactly what was going on as we went downtown.  That summer I stayed with them.  1986.  It was the summer before high school for me.  And my grandfather, through my parents, offered to pay me to stay with them and help around the house, do some chores.  To help her.  I gladly came.  I thought of it as freedom, and those of you who know my story might realize why that time away from home was precious and life sustaining.  But what I never realized was that I would be watching her die.

The trips to the hospital were a necessity.  Trying to save her life.  My grandfather was always there.  Always pushing the wheelchair.  He was somber in those trips.  Unlike the man I knew.  I watched him help her out of the Cadillac, her Cadillac.  That was something that he always tried to provide for her.  One material item that in some ways brought both of them out of the poor area where they met and grew up.  She pinched every penny and fed their young family through so many missionary churches and ministry jobs, always having just enough.  He never got her the convertible Mercedes that she wanted, but they always had one nice car.  And then his cars to ‘tinker’ on that often looked like an auto shop on their lawn.

He met her when she was still a child, though in many ways she was always older than everyone else around.  She was 14.  He was much older.  And they wed without either of their parents knowing.  Living apart but married.  She brought stability and calm.  He was the wild young man who could be heard coming from miles away, whether by car or on foot.  And he loved her.  I don’t think anyone who ever met them would have doubted that.  I don’t know as much of the story before my mom and her siblings came along, but as long as I could remember, they were always together.

It’s a story that Nicholas Sparks could only hope to create.  Two young lovers.  Faith.  Hope for something better.  As they traveled the countryside, she went with him, beside him, taking care of the areas that were her stronghold.  He would teach, talk to the community, and she would be working just as diligently beside him, or raising the three, then four kids that they conceived.  It wasn’t glamorous, but whoever said that true love was.  It’s not about Hollywood.  Lights, cameras, leading men and lovely ladies.  Love is real.  It’s not fickle or faint of heart.

As I saw her body laid to rest, those who knew them showed how true their devotion was.  All the years they had spent together in honest relationship sparked multiple connections throughout western Georgia.  I have never seen so many flowers and cards, people showing up from states away to honor her life.  It was a blur, but I realized after we walked out of the funeral home in Carrollton that I would never get to hear her get on to me, pop my butt or pinch my ear again.  And I wept.

Four years later I decided to go to West Georgia College.  Again, my grandfather offered for me to stay with him.  This time as his roommate/grandson.  It was a time for me to grow and get some independence and also a time to get to know him more.  Of the many lessons that he shared with me, often while sitting downstairs in his old recliner watching the Braves on channel 17 (TBS), was that he had loved.  Loved deeply and passionately.  He had his true love.  She came, and he watched her go.  And he did not regret any of it, not even the pain.  Because what is life without pain, joy, hurt, laughter, love.

He never remarried.  And I often thought he missed opportunity on another love, just like most of my family.  But he loved, and she loved him.  Loved deep and true.  What other human could hope to replace that?

Have you ever felt that?  

It was shortly after her passing that I got lost in the world of B-rate movies (John Cusack films and others like them).  Romantic Comedies that would always end with the loveable loser finally getting the girl.  Maybe not the girl he thought, but the right girl.  I’ve spent most of my life wanting the fiction.  And the one love I have had turned out to be far from reality.  You can’t hope for the fiction to become real.  That’s why it entertains us so, because it takes us into something that is Fantasy.  

But what I have seen, and now clearly understand is the reality of a simple country preacher, pushing his wife across the cement.  Carrying her to her death with humility, fear, heartache and the truest love.