My wife and I came across a beautiful old cemetery while traveling across Texas a while back. Tired of driving for the day, we decided to stop at a hotel in a small town on our way to Houston. After having a great dinner, we drove around the small town and found the local cemetery among the ancient oaks alongside the road. After seeing the beautiful carved headstones among the oak trees, we decided to take a few minutes to wander around. It was beautifully maintained and exuded a sense of peace and calm. When I was a kid, we regularly went out to the local cemetery and weeded and tended the family plots. That is something that people don’t do much these days and the result is a loss of connection to our past and the realization that each headstone represents a person that was just as alive at one time as we are now. That person had dreams, ambitions and a unique story just like each of us and I am sure, also like us, they didn’t give a lot of thought to their own mortality either.
As we walked among the memorials, we saw stones that marked the graves of people that had been born as far back as 1767. The sculpture you see in the photo is actually life size and marks the grave of a young woman that died in the early 1900’s. She was a wife and mother of two children but died fairly young. We could see by the dates carved on her husband’s headstone that he was quite a bit older than she was. This was pretty common back then. Judging by the beautiful memorial and inscription, her husband loved her very much and you could almost feel his sorrow and how bad he missed her when you stood next to their graves.
Seeing their graves made me think about a radio program I had heard on the way to work a short time before. The subject was love and how it matures and allows us to see our loved ones differently than the world does. Two women were part of the program and shared their stories. I remember one who had lost her husband after 46 years of marriage saying, “When he died we went from two spirits inhabiting two bodies to two spirits inhabiting one body.” She said that they had grown so close over the course of their lives together that it is as if he was still with her even though he was no longer physically present with her. She told how they had married young and had gone through the normal trials and tribulations that married couples do and came through it closer than ever. Divorce was never considered as a viable option to either of them and the thought of giving up on their marriage was never considered.
On the same program, there was another couple that had also been together for many years. The husband had suffered a major stroke that had left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Before the stroke he was a busy executive and she had her own career. Because of his limited mobility as a result of the stroke, she has become his primary care giver and takes care of many of his daily needs. She said “I couldn’t do what I now do for anyone else on earth, but for him I will gladly do it”. She said that they have actually gotten closer than ever because they now have time together that they never had before. A friend of hers told her that even though he cannot speak, she thinks that they talk more than any couple that she knows.
It occurred to me that the common denominator of these two stories is time. Love takes time to mature and grow into something so real that even though your partner is physically gone you still feel their presence. Time is the catalyst that causes love to generate a bond so strong that two people are able to communicate even if one of them is unable to create the sounds we call words. Maybe the reason that the current divorce rate is over 50% is due to a lack of the investment of time that allows love to mature. These days we are all moving faster than ever and have come to expect immediate gratification in everything we do. Fast food, fast cars, fast communications, fast deliveries, fast travel time between cities. Why not fast relationships too?
In the not so distant past, relationships evolved at a much slower pace. A young man would get permission from the parents of a young lady to begin courting her. After permission was given and ground rules were established, the couple would spend time together, slowly get to know each other and decide whether or not they were suitable mates for each other. After a year or two of dating and if they had discerned that they were made for each other, they got married with the blessing and support of both of their families. That sounds old fashioned and out of date now doesn’t it? We have “evolved” well beyond that haven’t we? Now we have online relationships, sexting, hook-ups, shack-ups, and one night stands. We have mothers that are encouraging their daughters to start dating in middle school and dads that are letting their sons treat girls like pieces of meat to be used for their pleasure and gratification. Does anyone really think that a 14 year old boy is looking for a potential wife and mate at that age? Do we really think that a middle school girl is mature enough to discern whether or not a boy is “the one”? The reason or justification that is often given by parents is that “we did it” or “everyone is doing it these days”. Maybe the fact that “everyone is doing it” is the reason that over half of all marriages end in divorce now.
Maybe the missing element is time. Time to allow young people to mature and figure out who they are and what they want before having to deal with another person and their wants and feelings. Couples need to spend time together and get to know each other before deciding to live together for the rest of their lives. Anyone can put up a front long enough to get in the other’s pants but it is hard to maintain that façade over time. And once you sleep with someone, you tend to ignore the red flags in their behavior that would disqualify them as a life partner.
Marriages need the gift of time to mature and create that unbreakable bond between two people. What better way to go through this life than with someone at your side that you know will be there, no matter what life throws at you? We hear stories of soldiers that return from war horribly maimed and disfigured to spouses that seem to be blind to their injuries. We have seen burn victims with faces that are scarred and would be considered “ugly” by the world’s standards standing next to their beautiful wives or handsome husbands that seem oblivious to how they look. The reason is that their love has matured to the point where they are seeing each other on another level. Over time they have grown to know and love the real person rather than just the shell that the rest of the world sees. I think most of us realize that we are actually spiritual beings inhabiting these meat sacks we call bodies. These shells will age and deteriorate over time but the real person, the spirit is ageless. Over time, true love causes the spirits of two people to bond together and see each other on the spiritual level and at that level they will always be beautiful to each other.
What better gift is there to give than the gift of time? What better inheritance to give our children than the time to mature to the point where they can make good choices? Is there a better gift for two people to give each other than making the commitment to give their relationship the time to create timeless bonds? Is there a better goal for a husband and wife to strive for than to reach the level where they are “two spirits inhabiting one body”.
Speaking from experience, I could have saved a lot of pain and heartache if I had just slowed down and allowed time to sort things out before making a decision. The French Renaissance writer Francois Rabelais pretty much summed it up when he wrote “Time ripens all things; with Time all things are revealed; Time is the father of truth.”
Apparently not much has changed since the 16th century.