Everlasting Love

The author's family gathered for his dad’s 40th birthday in 1956. Because his birthday was Feb. 29, there were only 10 candles on his cake. The author is standing by his mother. She has her arm around him.

The other day, I was thinking about my parents, who have been gone for many years now. I was thinking about their relationship as a couple, which is strange, because I never really thought of them as a couple -- just Mom and Dad.

I never saw my parents fight in front of anyone. Sometimes I could feel a little tension between them, but never did they raise their voices to each other -- at least, not in front of us kids.

I never remember them holding hands or putting their arms around each other in a public show of affection either. I don't remember them kissing each other, calling each other "Honey" or even giving each other a playful tap on the behind -- ever. Maybe it was their own upbringing; maybe it was the times. I figured I'd never really know -- it would always remain a mystery.

My parents' social life revolved mainly around our church. We all went to Cherry Street Baptist Church and participated in all the church activities during the year. Most of our friends were also members of the church, or relatives. The family bond was strong.

Both my parents were great role models in many, many ways while we siblings were growing up. Neither Dad nor Mom drank, smoked or used the Lord's name in vain. We did go on lots of picnics, family trips and visits to relatives.

One thing that sticks out in my memory was praying in public as a family. I hated praying in public at restaurants; now, looking back, I wonder why I did not continue to say grace in later years with my own family.

In the neighborhood that we called home, I played at friends' homes where parents fought all the time. It seemed like they hated each other!

At one friend's house, we could hear his parents saying things about each other through the walls -- bad things. I asked my friend if he ever worried about his parents getting a divorce. (I guess I was curious; I didn't know anyone who had been divorced.) My friend told me that he was not worried about it because he was pretty sure that there was a Catholic law against divorce.

I never personally worried that my own parents would divorce, even though they didn't display themselves as "lovers."

When I was a kid, my parents went out of their way to let me and my siblings know that they loved us, although they didn't generally do so by saying, "I love you." They showed us through their actions. Whether it was working long hours to provide us with a wonderful family vacation or all of us enjoying Sunday dinner around the same table, we knew we were loved.

In the 1990s, my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness, and we brought him home to die in the house where we all grew up. I honestly believe that he lived months past his projected date because he was home and happy to be with his wife of almost 55 years.

But even after we buried him, I realized I still had not seen my mother cry for him, so I still wondered about the love she had for him. My parents were such private people, never publicly sharing sorrows or even happiness. It made them very hard to read, even for those of us who were close to them. However, it all started coming into focus just before my mom died of a terminal illness years later.

Mom had asked me to come over to the house because she had some important papers that she wanted me to look at. Apparently she had drawn up a contract that she wanted me to sign. She wanted me to swear that she also would be allowed to die at home, just as Dad had.

I was reluctant to sign, but I knew she needed the peace of mind that my signature would give her. She said that they had built their house together, paid it off together, and raised a family in it together -- and they would die together in it.

Then I realized that she did love him, more than I ever knew. But the final thing that put my parents in a new light for me was a real surprise. After Mom had passed, I was cleaning out an old cedar chest of hers, and in that chest, I found hundreds upon hundreds of love letters they had been writing to each other since 1938. The real truth was presented to me when I found that the last letter in the pile was written by both of them the week my dad died.

This revelation left me breathless. It has offered me a new look into the private lives of my very in-love, intimate and passionate parents. I now know that they were deeply in love and that it was wrong of me to ever have questioned that. I now have concrete evidence that they were very much in love -- and always had been.