This coming Thursday worldwide we will celebrate the feast of Saint Valentine, or as it more commonly known, just Valentine’s Day. According to Wikipedia, Valentine’s Day is the most celebrated holiday around the world next to New Year’s Day. I think it appropriate that on at least one day each year all people should celebrate arguably the most important trait we possess as humans – our capacity to love others.
This year, in August, my wife and I will celebrate forty years of marriage. Over that period of time she has been and meant so many things to me. She has been my lover, my companion, my comforter, my challenger, my supporter, the mother of my children and grandmother to their children. She has been and remains my foundation.
Although I consider our love to be as awesome as it has been enduring, I also recognize that it has also been challenging. Truly loving someone is never easy. Entrusting one’s heart, our most vulnerable organ, into someone else’s care is the essence of love, but it involves the acceptance of sacrifice and vulnerability. It necessitates the foregoing of individualism in favor of collectivism. Someone once said that while marriages may be made in heaven, their maintenance must be done on earth and maintenance can sometimes entail grueling and hard work. While there is a real cost associated with love, there is also a majestic payoff. The best-selling author, speaker and relationship expert, Daphne Rose Kingma eloquently describes that payoff:
“In marriage we marry a mystery, an other, a counterpart. In a sense the person we marry is a stranger about whom we have a magnificent hunch. The person we choose to marry is someone we love, but his depths, her intimate intricacies – we will come to know only in the long unraveling of time. We know enough about our beloved to know that we love him, to imagine that, as time goes on, we will come to enjoy her even more, become even more of ourselves in her presence. To our knowledge we add our willingness to embark on the journey of getting to know him, of coming to see her, even so wonderfully more. Swept up by attraction, attention, fantasy, hope, and a certain happy measure of recognition, we agree to come together for the mysterious future, to see where the journey will take us. This companionship on life’s journey is the hallmark of marriage, its natural province, its sweetest and most primal gift. In promising always, we promise each other time. We promise to exercise our love, to stretch it large enough to embrace the unforeseen realities of the future. We promise to learn to love beyond the level of our instincts and inclinations, to love in foul weather as well as good, In hard times as well as when we are exhilarated by the pleasures of romance. We change because of these promises. We shape ourselves according to them; we live in their midst and live differently because of them. We feel protected because of them. We try some things and resist trying others because, having promised, we feel secure. Marriage, the bond, makes us free to see, to be, to love. Our souls are protected; our hearts have come home.”
After nearly 40 years my only true regrets are introspective. Most center on what I have said in anger or frustration that I shouldn’t have said and what I have not said due to stubbornness or insensitivity that I should have said. Words matter. In marriage or relationships, where there are so many words, they matter all the more. I ran across a story this week that brought this thought home to me. The story is by Laura Richards and is simply titled, “For Remembrance.”
A man sat by the coffin of the who had been nearest to him, in black and bitter care. And as he sat, he saw passing beyond the coffin a troop of bright and lovely shapes, with clear eyes and faces full of rosy light.
“Who are you, fair creatures?” asked the man. And they answered:
“We are the words you might have spoken to her.”
“Oh stay with me!” cried the man. “Your sweet looks are a knife in my heart, yet still I would keep you, for she is cold and deaf, and I am so alone.”
But they answered, “Nay; we cannot stay, for we have no being, but are only a light that never shone.”
And they passed on and were gone.
And still the man sat in black and bitter care.
And as he sat he saw rising up between him and the coffin a band of pale and terrible forms, with bloodless lips and hollow eyes of fire.
The man shuddered.
“What are you, dreadful shapes?” he asked. And they answered:
“We are words she heard from you.”
Then the man cried aloud in anguish:
“Depart from me, and leave me with my dead! Better solitude than such company.”
But they, sitting down in silence, fixed their hollow eyes upon him, and they stayed with him forever.
While I concur with the story’s point that our failures often spur a residual consequence of regret, I do not embrace that regret is the only finality to failure. We should never allow, even in love, what we have failed to do to interfere with or impede with what we can do. The consequence that should emanate from our failures should be an affirmation and commitment to what we will do, as opposed to dwelling upon what we did. After all, the cornerstone of our wedding vows is not the pledge of “I did,” rather it is the declaration of “I do.” As such, I offer the following Valentine wish to the too-often-taken-for-granted treasure of my life:
For hearing my thoughts, I do love you. For understanding my dreams, I do love you. For being my best friend, I do love you. For filling my life with joy and loving me without end, I do love you. I pledge my heart to you in this time and for all time for I do love you with equal measure and depth. I do!
Have an AWE-full weekend!
William J. “Bill” Bacque’