Sunday, February 14, 2010

The Legacy of Love


It is Valentines Day 2010. My wife, Bonita, and I have plans to enjoy a brunch in Greenville, South Carolina at a favorite restaurant called High Cotton. Our celebrations are always warm and intimate. No fanfare for the most part. We live far from our relatives and children so it is usually just the two of us. We don’t require much (there is a bit of old fashioned Midwestern simplicity to us as we grow older). The love that we share is more than enough. It has been tested over the years, survived and flourished. There is rarely a day that goes by in which either of us takes it for granted. Love, in the final analysis is all that matters. It is all that endures. I have been blessed with one that will leave a legacy of forgiveness, patience, kindness and joy. My life will always resound with all that is my Bonita.

A woman wrote a historical piece which was published in a county history book about my grandfather’s sister, Miss Nelle Baum. Aunt Nelle was a person who lived much of her life in confinement with what must have been great physical suffering. An operation left her paralyzed in the prime of her life yet she radiated a quality of love and joy that lived long after her death in 1961 at age 75. She never married and left no great fortune behind. What she did was to endow her family, friends, caregivers and everyone she met with a feeling of specialness and unconditional love. She was dedicated to this from her days as a Sunday School superintendant at her Methodist Church in rural Illinois to her hospital bed in Danville. She inspired people to be gentle and compassionate. My Dad and I visited her almost every Sunday and she always acted as if we were the most important people in the world. There were always words about her faith in God. She was a deeply spiritual person. Even so, it amazed me when I re-read the article that this woman wrote about Aunt Nelle. She was not related to us at all. I never met her or heard of her. Yet, my great aunt left an indelible mark on her life. She wrote of her own difficulties and how this elderly invalid woman had given her strength and increased her devotion. This affirms my belief that true love endures and overcomes anything.

There is nothing that we carry away with us when we are done with this life. Our heartaches and troubles come to an end. Love is all that matters. With it anything is possible and everything is good. The legacy that it leaves is never-ending.