Seasoned Love

Happy Valentine's Day! Whatever you do (or don't do) today, please remember that you are loved by someone. You're never too old or too young to be loved. You can love a pet, a child, a young buck/buck-ette, a person who is not "all there" or someone who is no longer in your life, but lives on strong in your heart. You have made a difference in the life of another!

My Mom is now 86 years old and has her share of tough days. Lately, she is awakened at night with terrible, frightening dreams. She has difficulty finishing sentences at times, and thoughts can be fragmented. However, when I phoned her yesterday, she told me she had won a contest at the nursing home "Sweetheart Social" based upon her written list of what love is.

I asked her what she had written about, and she remembered a couple of things, but then said she couldn't recall the rest. So, I decided to call the Activities Director, because it was really really important to me to know about this...what her mind was capable of concocting when it has been more fuzzy than usual lately. The Director called me back, and remembered Mom's list (and said that she had actually been judged by a panel of 10 nurses and aides) and here's what Mom wrote:

Love is:

Faithfulness

Integrity

Caring

Communicating through thoughtfulness

I was very touched by this list and have been thinking about it a lot since then.

I just love this picture of my parents taken sometime in 1942 (based on the year printed on the car license plate). This was when Mom says they were "just friends" as 21 year olds, before Dad went off to war. They courted through letters, and Dad even proposed in written form from far away. When on furlough, they married in a small ceremony in Kansas, and were sweethearts for the rest of their lives.