Love stays...

I remember one day as a young girl being so excited about a family vacation. We were all going. Our family along with aunts and uncles and cousins. I remember being so anxious to leave. And then I remember the trip being cancelled. That morning before we left. Something had happened to my grandmother. I don't remember the specifics. But just like that our trip did not happen. We all stayed home for my mom and aunt to take care of her. It was a lesson that resonated with me years later as my own children learned the same lesson at a very young age. They learned early that Love stays.


My girls were very young when my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. In fact, Madelyn was born after the official diagnosis. I began planning our spring break schedule around taking mom and dad with me on a mini vacation. I remember the first time we ventured out just the six of us. We had rented a condo in Myrtle Beach. We did fine on the drive there even though we had an infant with us. We got to our condo and I sent my  mom upstairs with Maddie. Dad and I were going to unload the van. I sent the girls with their little loads because they wanted to help too. I began unloading the bags and cleaning out the front of the van. When I returned to the back of the van, all of the bags were loaded back inside. Poor Daddy. He was trying to help. I explained we were taking the bags inside with us. We repeated the process two more times. I remember so vividly thinking that at that moment I could laugh or I could cry. But this was our new reality. That trip was in year four. We had nine more years to go. Love stays.


My dad was 55 at the time of his diagnosis. I had two grandmothers whose health was beginning to fail too. I began driving to mom and dad's house every other weekend to help my mother when it was her turn to care for my grandmother. I remember having them all at my childhood home one day. My grandmother, my dad and my children. Each one asking the same questions over and over again. My girls thought it was funny. My nerves did not. So the girls decided to play school. They made signs with the day of the week. A clock with the time. And other signs that answered the repeated questions. We taped them to the mantle over the fireplace. They had a captive classroom that day. Again, the choice was to laugh or cry or scream. But Love stays.


My sweet husband gave up a lot during those years. He would keep one or two of the girls and I would take the rest with me. Weekend after weekend. Until the time came that dad moved into a nursing home and mom moved in with us. We spent many holidays standing around his bed. Our plans got shifted to include a trip to see him for birthdays and Thanksgiving and Christmas. My girls were little but they knew well what the inside of a hospital and an emergency room and a nursing home looked like. I could have sheltered them from the reality of the disease. I was told that they were too young to experience some of the reality of those 13 long years. But I chose to teach them that Love stays.


I watched my mother drive everyday back and forth from home to the nursing home. For almost five years. I watched my beloved daddy forget who I was. Forget how to walk. Forget how to eat. I watched my girls read to him and love him. I watched my husband shave his father-in-law on many occasions. They watched me feed him. Not once did he call us by name or talk to us. Not one time in those last years. But Love stays.


On that day thousands of years ago, He hung on a tree. At the end He looked up and asked why His Father had forsaken Him. At that point, He could have come down off that cross. He could have called on a legion of angels to help Him. But He chose instead to say that it is finished. For our sakes. Love stays.

Love bears all things, 

believes all things, 

hopes all things, 

endures all things. 

1 Corinthians 13:7