Tuesday, September 14, 2010

The Call

Today I received a most extraordinary call at work. It was a man, mid-sixties and full of grace and wisdom. He left me with a blessing that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. I have tears in my eyes even now thinking of his words. He shared with me that he had lost his wife a few years ago after two years of illness. He took care of her those two years, took nursing courses and learned how to. He asked nurses and had them teach him too just how to do everything that was necessary. He said that he fell in love with her on the fourth date, I believe it was....and he remained in love with her until the second she died. He never even held hands with another woman all of those years, he told me.
Then he told me he was out with a friend one night and two women approached them and started talking to them (flirting probably) and he said that he asked them if he could tell them about his friend he was with. They agreed and he said that he told them that his friend here had fallen in love with a woman and married her and that it came about that they were told she had cancer. He said that he took care of her every day. He came home at lunch and breaks to check on her and when she became paralyzed, he would even clean her and the bed when she was unable to control her bodily functions any more. He said, he loved her and cared for her until the moment she died. Then he said to these two girls..."Would your boyfriends clean you up if you pooped in the bed? Would they clean up vomit off of you if you were ill?" He said, "Because if you have to say no to that, then they are not the great men you thought they were and you had better get looking for a better man than that."
He said to me, I don't know about your husband or how he treats you...but go home every night and hold him warmly. He said, "Husbands should kiss the ground their wives walk on, it is just part of being a husband. It is what they should do."
He said that when he got married, he said for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health...and that was what he meant.
By the end of this call I had tears in my eyes....and I prayed to God to grant me a man in my life like this one had been. One that believes that a wife is precious and worth loving no matter what. And I ask Him every day to make me a woman worthy of such a man. And a woman that will never allow that man to forget how precious he is. When that day comes, I will come home every night and hug my man warmly and think of this precious man with words of incredible wisdom.

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