Here is a story from 'here' and there..

A conversation between friend:
"What would you do, after facing the stressed day work and you found the frown face of your signifcant other and he dumped you to sleep outside in the weather like this?"
He replied, "then I will sleep there, alone."
"And how if this condition kept continuing for a week? months?"
He smiled and answer as facing his commitment, "I will patiently say to him I love you and faithfully I am sure he would not do that."

Poet Archibald MacLeish says that "love, like light, grows dearer towards the dark." This is what he calls the "late, last wisdom of the afternoon." The same is true of our love for one another; it can indeed grow dearer as we age.

I have seen it myself in two other elderly friends.Commited for over 30 years, they are still very much in love. One is dying of brain cancer; the other is dying of Parkinson's disease. Few years ago I remember, back in Sydney, I saw Jean lean over Paul's bed, kiss him, and whisper, "I love you." Jean replied, "You're beautiful."I thought of couples who have given up on their commitment, who are unwilling to endure through better or worse, sickness or health, poverty or wealth, and I am saddened for them.

They will miss the kind of love my friends here and there enjoy in their latter years.I have watched Jean and Paul over the years, and I know that deep faith in God, lifelong commitment, loyalty, and self-denying love are the dominant themes of their commitment. They have taught me that true love never gives up, it "never fails." Theirs is the "late, last wisdom of the afternoon," and it will continue to the end. May we express that same unfailing love to those who love us.


Inspired from my beloved friend, Bapa Paul Saliba
Originally quoted from FW, IMS mailing list, with some additional changes.