They Laugh Together. They Smile. Survival of the Intertwined.
Or, My Grandfather Made It Because He Had To: My Grandmother was Waiting to See Him for Supper.
_______________________________ Jonathon S. Feit (April 23, 2016)
This is what romance films are made of. It is a story about a love that literally keeps two people alive. This is not about fear of letting go, but unwillingness to do so when to do so would cause one’s lover’s hand to drop and body to fall. This is unadulterated, unaltered, pockmarked-yet-perfect, unrelenting, passionate, companionate and eternal. This is quite the model of a marriage.
Those who know me — and even those who don’t — know that there have been few times in my life when words have failed me.
Failed me. Utterly. Nothing coming through my fingers now comes close to capturing the wonderment, gratitude, and sheer…how the FUCK?!…of it all.
I have long been a master of language (thanks, Dad!), and can bend it to my will. Yet sometimes — rarely, but those moments are by definition compelling — it misbehaves. Like now: I lack words sufficient to even orbit the beauty of the simple moment captured on the video that you see above. My grandma is several years since having had her last stroke. Last week, my grandfather was at Northridge Hospital with an idiopathic lung infection (complications from pneumonia? We really don’t know). Several family members — including Mabel and Hunter, our infant son— traveled to Los Angeles because, frankly, we weren’t confident he would make it but wanted the chance to take some final photos. If he didn’t make it, neither would she, we knew. The week was challenging. Both of my grandparents have lived over 90 years and they have been married for nearly three generations. But medicine is a miracle — this we see over and over again.
Yet this was about more than medicine, more than prayer or meditation, more than a cry to all that is good, dear, holy, and ineffable. The sacred showed up. Because these two are different: I saw with my own eyes that HIS FEAR OF LEAVING HER ALONE COMPELLED HIM TO PULL THROUGH YET AGAIN.
Intentionally or not, Grandma kept him alive, because he keeps her alive, and they need one another. They are one another. Two became one a long time ago. But it’s so much more than the stuff of biblical tales and Nicholas Sparks movies. A wordsmith more skilled than I could scarcely capture the wonder of the day my mother texted, “Grandpa is being discharged.” Hello, goosebumps.
I’m holding back tears now. But this isn’t scripted; this is real, happening in Tarzana. Hollywood, just a few miles away, are you listening? Few love stories are so complex yet true. From a World War to a cardiac bypass and back again — “souls intertwined” is insufficient. Words, my friends, you nearly failed me.
