The other evening I heard Maria crying and I went over to ask her how she was and she was working on a very beautiful blog entry about her experience caretaking for me when I got sick with Lyme Disease. Maria is honest and open about her emotions, they show on her face, she cries easily and honestly. I promised at our wedding to love her a little more every time she cries, and that has been a promise I can keep. Maria is a profoundly loving person, perhaps the first person in my love to love me so deeply and purely.

The caretaking experience was new to both of us, I had never really been sick before in our relationship, and I can’t remember being so disoriented and helpless, especially when the fever and chills struck. You lose your dignity and pride at a time like that, you accept your helplessness, you turn yourself over to another in the most complete and ultimate way.

It took Maria several hours to write those three very beautiful paragraphs and it was clear to me the real source of her emotion was not only that she loved taking care of me, but that it brought into focus a reality of our relationship that I have always seen more clearly than she has, at least up until now. I am 17 years older than she is, and the odds are she is not done caretaking for me. It is also likely that she will live beyond me, and I wish nothing more for her than more live and creativity in her life.

I have thought a lot about how I wish to live and die and insofar as it is within my power, I will work to die a natural death, one that is not prolonged by the hubris of modern medicine.  I will do all I can do to keep her from devoting too much time to my care. My wish for Maria is another chapter after I am gone, not years of caretaking. In our sometimes cruel and heartless country, we keep people alive beyond reason, tempt them with false and expensive notions of  immortality, stick them with the bill  and make their loved ones pay and pay. I do not intend for that to happen with me. That is not love to me.

This is a sad and yet beautiful thing, this reality, this acceptance of where Maria and I are in life. Many people write both of us and suggest we are so happy and connected because we haven’t been married for so long. Just wait, they say, just wait and see. We do see the silences of couples of all ages in restaurants, the irritations and fatigue in some long relationships. There is some truth to those comments, but also some mean-spiritedness.  We will get on one anothers nerves, how could we not? But we will not have a 30-year- marriage, not have as much time as some people for love to run out and grow weary. I know how relationships like that can sputter and die, and I hope to spare Maria that also. Our love sems so fresh, it grows and deepens every day.

Still, the lesson of the caretaking blog – it touched many people beyond me, Maria is a deliberate writer, not a gusher like me, but a very good one – was complex and important.  it was a powerful thing for both of us to acknowledge our creative connection, our great love and commitment to one another, and the truth of our love – it is not likely to last as long as both of us would wish. Maria learned a powerful lesson last week and shared it in her honest and loving way. We learned even more about us. Taking care of someone you love is not only a burden, it can be a gift and a joy, an affirmation of the purest connection.

I often regret that Maria and I didn’t encounter one another earlier in life, but I also see the foolishness in this. If we had met 30 years ago, I doubt she would have loved me at all. Life brings us to where we need to be, when we need to be there. To find love, you have to be open to it.

I believe good relationships are hard work, and require much thought, patience, and attention. I am committed to ours, and last week I saw how committed Maria is to the same thing, in the same way. If she needs me, I will be there, and I know now if I need her, she will care for me. We held each others hands and walked together into the wonderful and powerful future.  There is a wonderful beauty in this for me, our love is stronger than anything else we have faced or fill face. And we have faced a lot together.  In a curious but accepting way, I am grateful for this truth, that our love will not grow weary, but wiser and deeper still.