On Deathless Love

I love Summer nights.

Summer in Hampton Roads is the best, because there is ALWAYS something going on.

This weekend it's Harborfest, in Downtown Norfolk. I've been going to Harborfest since I was a little girl. There's live music, vendors, all these cool ships come in from other places, fireworks, it's fun.

Michael and I went last night to see the band, The Hand and the Heart.

We also saw his cousin, Caitlin, who was passing through town. The weather was perfect, the crowd wasn't huge, and it was fun to be out and about on a Summer night.

After the concert and a couple of beers, we were feeling romantic, so we took a walk along the waterfront, and walked down to the Armed Forces Memorial. The memorial is made up of these iron-cast actual letters from soldiers and sailors at war, to people they love back home. The letters are from the Revolutionary War to the Gulf War. I've read that they're going to add letters from the Iraq war and Afghanistan.

We walked around to the letters that were lit up in the night Summer sky. Michael read a few out loud. I read a couple out loud. It was moving. Yesterday was the 70th anniversary of D-Day, and I couldn't stop thinking about those brave boys, storming the beach that day. They were so young. SO brave.

This letter from the Civil War stuck out to me.

The soldier writes, "Sarah, my love for you is deathless."
At the bottom of the letter, you can see he died a week after he wrote this.
I bet she got this letter after he died.

"My love for you is deathless."

Michael's power wheels are somewhere getting fixed right now. We sent them off a few weeks ago. So, last night I had to push him around Harborfest. It wasn't a big deal. I like to think of it as a bonus workout.

Recently, we've dealt with a couple of health things and last weekend I let my worrying get out of control and I thought about how, one day, he's going to die.  Not anytime soon, y'all. Don't freak out. But one day we're all going to die.

You want to know how selfish my love is?
I don't want him to ever die!

I feel bad about that. Because of our faith, we believe that Michael will be completely healed in Heaven. He will be whole. Walking! And yet, my selfish love would rather have him here with me, paralyzed. Suffering. Waking up and facing this every single day.

I think that's kind of mean, and I usually cry if I think about it. I wonder if I'll get to a point one day that my love will grow to wanting Heaven and wholeness for him. I don't know.

For now, I'd rather stand behind him and hug his neck and kiss the top of his head and hug with the sides of our faces as we watch a band by the water on a Summer night.

That soldier wrote his love for his wife was "deathless," and as I pushed my husband around last night, reading those letters, I couldn't get that line out of my head.

I want to love like that.