"A Story to Share..."

Originally published on Yahoo 360, June 16, 2006

Recently, several of my online friends have posted questions in their blogs concerning, “What is love?” and/or how you can define it and tell it apart from similar feeling such as mere infatuation. As I pondered what my friends were writing about, I recalled a wonderful lesson I learned about this more than 20 years ago when I was still just a young man. When I decided to comment on what one friend had written, I realized that I was telling the story of that lesson from long ago. This is what I said:

Indeed… knowing what is “love” is perhaps the most valuable lesson many never learn. I’ve often felt fortunate that I had a great example of what love should be in my parents (even though they divorced). But the lesson that brought it home to my heart was one that I received almost by accident (but are there really any accidents?) It was when I just 18 years old.

I was selling something or other door-to-door in the neighborhood I grew up in. I rang the bell at the door of a beautiful home I’d often admired on my walks home from school. An elderly gentleman came to the door and was kind enough to listen to my twenty second pitch and then he did the unthinkable, he invited me into his home. He offered me a seat in a most beautifully furnished living room filled with portraits of a loving family and then he left to get me a cold drink… It was a hot summer day and I must have looked pretty worn out and overheated.

The old gentleman seemed to take forever to come back. I heard him climb the stairs and he stayed a while, I wondered about that, since he was supposed to be getting me a cold drink. Finally, I heard him coming down the stairs and he went back to the kitchen. A short time later, he reappeared with the promised drink, a large icy cold glass of lemonade. After I had a few sips, I went back into my pitch for the product (I can’t remember what it was now…) and he cut me off in mid-sentence, saying, “I’ll take one.”

It was as I took all the details of his order that I learned that he was a retired pastor of a local church. When I thanked him for his order and his hospitality, he said he wanted to share with me “an essential truth of life.” I thought surely he was going to try to convert me to his faith, but I was prepared to listen to what he had to say, after all, he’d been very kind to invite me in and buy what I was selling. As he started to speak, I was astonished at what he said, and to this day, I’ve never forgotten his lesson to me.

He told me, that his wife was upstairs on her deathbed and was not expected to survive the night. He said they’d been married for more than 50 years and that he truly loved her. He talked about some of the ups and downs they’d experienced in their lives and the joy of knowing someone loved you and that you loved them in that same way. He said he wanted to tell me how to tell love from lust and everything else. He said, “When you love someone, even their very breath is precious to you.” And with that, as tears flowed from his eyes, his lesson ended. I thanked him and expressed my concern for his dying wife. He waved me down the walk and then shut the door.

I thought about what he said for the rest of that day, and for several days afterwards. I was passing his house the following Saturday morning when a funeral limousine pulled up to the driveway and he came out in his best black suit. I knew he was going to his wife’s funeral. When he saw me looking as I passed, I nodded my condolences, but he didn’t seem to recognize or remember me.

It was perhaps a week or two later that I was again passing, and saw a younger man who somehow looked familiar to me tending the yard. I stopped and asked if the old pastor was at home and he told me that he was his son and that his father had passed away the week after his mother died. As I told the son about my experience with his father, he said, “Yes, mom and dad truly loved each other… he couldn’t bear to be without her…” I thought to myself, “Yes, they must’ve loved each other,” and I’ve never forgotten what the old pastor taught me on that hot summer day… “Even their very breath is precious to you.”

Dedicated to Stephen Christopher Harris - April 2009