They Dont Build Relationships Like This Anymore

Dan, I just read a very sweet story about a couple from your link....is that what you meant to post?! edit: never mind, I finally got your meaning...brain cells slow down at 3am sometimes! Think I still had drill press chuck on the brain...

Well it's 4am and like Melissa, it took a few to get your meaning. Yes it was...

That is beautiful! A love that most search for and never find.

Dan - thanks for sharing that. I call them the fortunate few . . . with how they chose to live and die.

Sorry for the abstract title.

The part of the article that got to me was this:

""He was ready," Cody said. "He just didn't want to leave her here by herself.""

He was old and he was tired. And he wanted to go. But he loved her so much that he did not want to leave her behind facing all that pain and loneliness. So he held on. As soon as she died, he let go.

In these "it's all about me" times, you just don't find people and relationships like this any more.

I read this story a few weeks ago.
I am a firm believer that the pain one partner in a relationship is trying to relieve the other of, is misguided. After experiencing the deaths in my immediate family, I can honestly say that IMO it is about the lessons the ones left behind still have to learn. I was at my grandmother's side for a month, with a newborn and a toddler and she made me say goodbye to her and go back to another city where my husband was...I hated her decision, but I said goodbye. 16 years later, it was my turn again to say goodbye...and I seized the moment to do so...it made a huge difference.When my dad was given 10 months to live in horrible pain, my mom rued the fact that he wasn't blessed to just go to sleep and not wake up...but we had lessons to learn from my dad who taught us all HOW to die...with dignity, wisdom and peace. The pain was the price he paid to teach us, his final gift. I used the lesson I had learned and was able to say goodbye for my own needs to go on in a healthy way. I also gave him permission to stop fighting the fight against cancer. Then my mom passed and I took what I learned from the importance of saying goodbye and giving permission....this is the way life makes sense to me. It's really just about those of us left over....and someday, it will be our turn to teach those remaining behind.

Marlene, I can relate to your father's dying with dignity. I moved in to take care of my dad who took several month to die of cancer. Mom had already passed on (they'd been married for 60 years) and that's when he started a swift decline. The doctors did all they could to help with his pain but as you know, there is no way to sail through that kind of agony despite whatever drugs are thrown at it. At the end he smiled and said, "It's been a wonderful life." He said it with such passion and thankfulness. Even after a life filled with endless struggles and all those months of suffering he could still find it in his heart to be grateful for the life he was given.

Yes, Kathleen....and somehow, the pain was the price he paid to reach that sage conclusion and pass it on to you to hold,r emember and then integrate into your being on earth.

Yes, I guess its acceptance and letting go.

For far too many - everything about our lives is use it and throw it away - we do it with our family and our friends. Few understand the struggles, the shared hardships, to succeed at love and marriage. Our parents and grandparents lived, loved, and worked at their relationship - outwardly if often seemed as if they simply 'had it made' - few understood what they did without so their children could have a good education. One can only guess at how lonely and lost my grandfather was when Granny died, he didn't pass right away but sat quietly on the front porch of his oldest daughters home - far away from everyone and everything he'd ever known.

I find it interesting that they look like brother and sister. My youngest sister and her husband look very much alike and are, after +34 years together, still very much in love. That would make a good study-are couples who look alike happier than those who don't?