Serve it When the Kettle is Hot

From my earliest memories, I can recall the love my paternal grandparents shared for one another. Married early in their lives, just as many of their peers, then have lived over 50 years together, enjoyed the birth of two children, and bore the death of one of those children. Their life together has been characterized by harships. My grandmother has been handicapped for my entire life, forced to live out the better part of her life in a wheel chair. My grandfather, on the other hand, has been forced to wait on her, even as his health has worsened and worsened. Now, in their frail age, they are more dependent on one another than ever, yet I don't know if I have ever met two people that are so genuinely happy.

Recently, my grandmother turned 79, and to celebrate my family went out to dinner. After dinner, I followed them home and spent the night with them. As a child, I had done this very often, however, since I had started high school I had not spent the night with them. (In hindsight, the time I lost with them has become the biggest regret of my life thus far).

While I was with them, I saw their reliance on each other. For breakfast, my grandmother drank a full cup of coffee, half a glass of milk, and 1/4 a glass of orange juice. My grandfather, of course, served all three to her, without even thinking about it. He knew just what she wanted, and he gave it to her. No need to ask her to say "when" or anything along those lines; he simply knew.

I also learned that before she wakes in the mornings my grandfather pours her a glass of water and sits it on the kitchen table, timing it just before she wakes so that it is ice cold.



The love that my grandfather has for his wife is one of passion; the type of love that many term as "agape". This is the love that I long for, to have a wife and love her the way I have seen my grandfather love my grandmother, the way that Christ loves the Church. At this point in my life I honestly want nothing more than this love, to make it mine.