Love: Kept Forever

If it’s not for God’s call to come home, my Mom and Dad would’ve been celebrating their 50th anniversary, today.

Anyone who knows me knows how great of a person my dad was. He was my hero, a father who made it easy for me to grasp the existence of God. Not a day in my life is he ever forgotten or missed.

But how about his other half, the woman who had been left behind for 10 years? The love of his life – his beautiful rose, and brilliant jewel: My Mom.

A spitting image of my dad, I don’t have much of my mom in me. Every time we tried to find a resemblance of each other, people always say, “You two are quite different.” Totally on the opposite side of the personality type wheel – INTP (me) and ESFJ (her), — I find it hard to understand my mother from time to time. But yet I wanted so much to be like her. And believe me, I still do…

As she ages, and I mature – with every additional wrinkle on her skinny hands; I see the hard work she put in to raise us. I see all the meals she prepared and cute little outfits she made. I acknowledge the time she put in to teach & drive, to discipline & caress, to hold & give. The set of hands that were there alongside my Dad’s, the hands that nurture and shape us.

After a decade of loss, heart break and loneliness, my Mom still remains in love with the same man. Taking out my Dad’s picture in her wallet, she whispers “My sweetheart.” She then brushes her fingers against his photograph.

“Why would I want to be with another?” she said when asked, “I’ve already had the best one.”

Isn’t that something? 

So the question is, “How could I not be inspired to be more like my mother?”

Believe me, I don’t wish to be beautiful, smart, practical, disciplined, nor super athletic – (like my Mom). That ship has sailed a long time ago 🙂 However, I am more than inspired to stay in and never let go of our love, and to stand firm by the man I said, “Yes, I do” to.

“Why would I want to be with another? I’ve already had the best one.” 

Imagine those words, whether that comes out of your mouth or your better half’s.

Wouldn’t that be something?