Though it was decades ago, I remember it clearly. I was in a hospice room with an acquaintance while he was visiting his dying wife. WHY I was chosen to join him in this intimate setting, I don’t recall, but I clearly remember the very brief conversation, if you could even call it that. He took her hand and said to her, “I want you to know that I have always been faithful to you. I have never cheated on you.” Her eyes remained closed as if to open them required too much effort in her state of suffering. But the hands clasping each other communicated to me more than mere words could impart.
And yet the words seemed as necessary to him as they were surprising to me. And they seemed to come out quite of the blue. If they were a continuation of a previous conversation there was no evidence to it. Rather, it was like the situation I’d seen before where words of love had not been spoken for so long because of embarrassment or discomfort, until the forces of nature could simply not hold them back.
There is something about love and faith that needs to be affirmed both in actions and in spoken word. Oh, it seems we have no problem neglecting them in the routine busyness of life. But these words, and the actions which affirm them, are the relational glue that holds people together. They speak to our great hope that we were loved and that we loved well. And it seems like they are needed to be expressed never so much as in times of despair, when life is threatened or near its end. It is at these times especially that we look to the sum of life and ask what mattered most.
I experienced a number of such moments this past year with my journey through cancer. My mind flooded with so many things I let trip me up throughout the years and so many things I could have done better. But overshadowing all the shortcomings and certainly any claim to “success” were faith, hope and love. In the end, and especially now in the middle of life’s journey, these are what I want to remain. How about you?
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:13
