Crazy Love

So a patient was admitted today who will be going into the OR soon.

His wife (in her eighties like the patient), appeared to be very concerned over her husband's plight.

She admitted to the nurse that she had never spent a night alone and apart from her husband.

When she left for home looking fragile and shaky, I found I had many thoughts.

Although some expressed disbelief and ridicule at the woman's statement that she had never been apart from him, I found it to be strangely touching.

To spend a lifetime with someone, to be so close, and to be devastated and afraid of spending time apart...although that may not be entirely healthy, it speaks volumes about that relationship.

Too often, I find people are content to be independent in their relationships.

They may be married by name, but they live like a single. They travel alone, often parent along for long periods of time, and there is no intimacy or closeness.

They spend time apart, there is no co-dependency or reliance on each other...it would appear that they almost do not need each other.

I believe that unfortunate independence is what contributes to so many divorces and break ups within our society.

Call me old-fashioned (and maybe even crazy) but I would never be interested in a relationship like that.

I would want my partner to yearn for me at all time, to need me always, and so when the time came that we may be forced to part--even if only for night--there would be a little grief.

That love is so consuming and overtaking; it feels more real and authentic than the people who marry in front of hundreds with exorbitantly expensive wardrobes, and with the acute inability to need someone, to depend on someone.

Give me whole hearted, flaming, ridiculous love, that fills you to the whole and that you absolutely cannot live without.

It does not matter if it leaves me fragile, frail, and feeling bewildered upon seperation.

I want it all, or nothing.