What is Love?

I publish this piece i wrote in 2011 on the anniversary of my first late wife Jean (Norma Jean Windham) death who gave me 19 years of happiness and now also Vickie Harrelson who passed this month 3 yrs ago. It is tough for me as I just got notified of my son JJ's death a former Marine who died apparently homeless off the grid in Honolulu from an overdose at the tender age of 47. No one can deny my love of my son just as I love his sister and my "steps". We have all shared tough times together. I am asking for prayers for them and for my brother Richard (former Army) in Germany suffering with I'm thinking is a busted pacemaker and continual strokes. YOUR PRAYERS and GOD can help me overcome. I feel no pain, so much is happening including my own recent hospitalization that I'm "numb" all over. Prayers work I have known that my whole life. So here is what I wrote in 2011 and share annually...I hope it comforts you, as it does me. You may use ONLY by including my byline and not changing a single word as it is a copywrite.
What is Love?
Jim Gschwind PHD
The Despondent Correspondent
Such a simple title to try and explain such a complex subject. It’s hard sometimes to imagine our lives without love and like many I’ve had many types of love as well and have and lost at love just as many have.
I couldn’t possibly begin to describe all the various types of love: Agape’ love (unconditional) which is the highest form; family love including love between siblings, parents and their children which can best be described as that bond that never disappears no matter how much a family might fight and bicker among themselves; “Best friend” love is just a comfortable familiarity of knowing you can be yourself at all times; Soul-mate love which encompasses many of the previous definitions; a “fictitious” love at first sight and finally the “false” notion of love as passion and lust.
I am reminded of an old movie that was one of my favorites with Jimmy Stewart called “Shenandoah”. This movie to me contained so many life lessons that I took to heart. I remember the scene when young Doug McClure nervously came in to see Jimmy Stewart to ask for his daughters hand and I’ll try and share it with you as it reminds me so much of the love of my life and my soul-mate of 19 years who just passed away and luckily became assigned as my new guardian angel. In fact when we were dating many years ago and didn’t know we were in love yet, I tried to do my best Jimmy Stewart (it’s pretty good) and recited the scenes by heart and brought a beautiful smile to her eyes and lips. I think that’s what I really did to win her heart back then. It goes like this:
Doug McClure (Sam): “Sir I’d like to ask for your daughters hand in marriage”
Jimmy Stewart: “Why Sam? Do you like her?
Doug: “No Sir I love her”
Jimmy: “No…No…No…I asked if you liked her Sam…you see…you can love someone without liking them and you can learn to love but not learn to like. If you love a woman without liking them first, the nights can be cold. I think I was married to Margaret for awhile and I liked her…..I liked her a lot….when one day it just dawned on me that I loved her”
Doug: “Oh sir, I’ve always liked Jenny, I always liked her a lot”.
Jimmy: “Well then you take her Sam and treat her right because if you don’t …..it’s going to be between me and you…..”
I think one can easily see why that was always one of my greatest life lessons back when movies actually taught us a moral story.
I don’t think I really took it to heart until I met my recent love. Ours was a special love. She had a wonderful smile on her face and beautiful eyes that told me there was a special soul inside. Like many men my age it took me a few failures to figure out that what we think we want when we are young and the hormones are raging isn’t quite what it cracked up to be. Love based on pure passion and physical attraction loses its “fizzle” just as a soda goes flat quickly. There was something I just couldn’t put my finger on with this woman. In fact I met her a night when my best friend and I after work were doing the karaoke circuit and I was singing. Suddenly a woman (who it turned out later was a “caregiver” locally and was on her only night off) started dancing alone in front of me as I sang “Teddy Bear”. I was really irritated because she was taking my concentration off the song. I had made a bet with my friend that I could get anyone’s phone number that night. I got hers. In fact, I “scored” a number of phone numbers from some pretty strange individuals and when we got back to my apartment I threw them away one by one until the very last one……hers and quietly slipped it into my top pocket. By the way I’d often sing “Goodbye Norma Jean” for her and one of her last wishes was for me to sing that song for her since it was her name. I do often. As a tribute to the night we met and the song I was singing, I always received a “teddy bear” from her every Christmas.
To make a long story short, I did a lot of romantic antics to win her heart, but I think the story above did it for her and me. We went down to the courthouse to get a license and on a whim allowed the clerk to do it right then and there.
Yes I liked her a lot but had never really experienced true “soul-mate” love and about a year later I was sitting on the back porch just thinking and it just occurred to me that I really loved this lady. I remembered again my favorite movie.
We spent 19 wonderful years together and had joy and sorrow together as many couples do and our love grew each and every day to the point where we couldn’t stand to go or do anything without the other. We bought and rebuilt our home three times after hurricanes together. She grew up a poor Mississippi sharecroppers daughter picking cotton after school, second youngest of nine and I was determined to give her a better life and became more ambitious late in my life. In fact during these last couple years I’ve worked away from her coming home every 5 or 6 weeks for a few days and spending countless hours on the phone with her. We actually grew closer and closer.
In the past couple months as she became terminally ill. I found myself selfishly crying over losing the only wonderful thing in my life….how selfish this was as she never complained. By the time I bought her a cruise as a present, she wasn’t able to take it. I sunk into deep depression myself knowing that all my love was “too late”. Our division of labor in the house was; she paid the bills and I earned and kept getting promoted and sending all the money home.
Recently the hospice had told me I had better start my 18 hour drive home from work. As I was packing and getting ready to go, she called and said, you don’t have much leave from coming home all the time, save it…for when we need it. I stayed packed until at work two days later she called and said “honey, come home….it’s time”. I made it in record time.
I spent her last 24 hours holding her hand and praying for God to give her a reprieve or not let her suffer. She refused the morphine. She continued to smile the whole time, as I lay my head on her body and cried unabashed like a baby, praying for her not to leave but to take me also. In her last hour, I selfishly would gently push on her diaphragm unnoticed hoping and praying for one more breath until the little gasps became more spaced and finally her chest didn’t rise again, and her hand went limp in mine. I thought for a moment I could still see her beside me comforting me and saying “it’s alright”. She passed on the anniversary of my youngest sisters’ untimely death and I thought I could hear her voice in my head telling me it was okay.
Amid the confusion of having the funeral home and nurses arrange her departure from our home of 19 years, I managed to get a lock of her hair and became angry when they wouldn’t let me walk her out to the waiting funeral home vehicle from the house.
I realized how much I loved her then but a day later when I started going through our bills and trying to distract myself with paperwork. I found her last scribbled note on a ragged piece of scratch paper….” Goodbye my love…sorry I hurt you…Love Jean). It was then that the tears started all over again and reaffirmed my love and what losing it meant to me.
In my loneliness I take that worn note to this day out of my top pocket and the tears slowly ooze from my eyes every time I read it…. I didn’t understand how she thought she hurt me! I would walk slowly through “our” home and suddenly she was “everywhere” with me comforting me.
Then it dawned on me. God had replaced that sorry excuse for a Guardian Angel I had before and given her back to me as my new Angel. She is with me at all times.
That my friends is how I found love and instead of losing it this time was able to “keep it”.
Goodbye Norma Jean………….My love.
(Sidenote:)
Many months following my loved ones passing I re-entered the dating scene reluctantly but with outward gusto knowing that my love wanted me to be happy again.
Hard to believe but all my prayers were answered as I finally found someone who immediately touched me with tender emotions and returned my love. I no longer do not believe in love at first sight and feel my guardian angel (Jean) smiling down on me with tender warmth and approval. Having had true love before it was readily and easily recognizable and I knew what I had. I just can't understand how this lowly individual can be blessed with so much love in a lifetime. I know who I have to thank.......Thank you Lord.....Thank you Jean...for leading me down the right path.
(this essay is under copyright protection, ask my permission first before republishing,
I allow republish if my by-line is included, and no editing shall be allowed)