True Love

I believe in ghosts. I believe in spirits. I believe in soul mates - our companions in this life and beyond it. You can call it hokey or hippie dippy or whatever you want to throw at me. I still believe it. I believe there are people in this life that we know from another. And I believe that when these people pass from this life to the next, they sometimes come back to us to offer guidance or support or a shoulder to cry on. And anyone who was with me in my grandmother's hospital room the other day would believe it, too. I would bet my life that my grandfather was in that room.


When my grandfather was alive, he and my grandmother enjoyed the rarest of gifts - a truly happy marriage. They were madly in love until the day he died, and if you ask my grandmother, they remain so now, eight plus years later. From their marriage, I learned many of the important lessons about love - never to go to bed angry, to tell each other you love each other every day, always to present a united front, to relish your differences as well as your similarities.

Soon after he died, I went to visit my grandmother. We enjoyed their nightly ritual of cocktail hour. I drank a manhattan - my grandfather's "winter" drink, and I sat in his chair in the corner of their living room. Soon after I sat down, the lamp next to the chair flickered off, then back on. My grandmother giggled lightly. "That's Bucky. He does that every night during cocktail hour." That's only one example among many of the times he's found ways to communicate to us over the years.

On Thanksgiving last year, when my son was a month old, my grandmother told me that she'd been talking to my grandfather about my son, and that he thought he was beautiful and special and that he loved him. I didn't question that for a moment. I knew she was right. He'd told me the same thing, in his way.

Last week, my grandmother had a stroke-like episode (we're still not entirely sure what exactly happened or when), and was in the hospital. For the first couple days she was there, she was very out of it. In the middle of a sentence, she would just zone out. Her doctors think she was having mini-strokes. But the strange thing is that, often, during these zone outs, she would gaze up toward the corner of her room and speak quietly or nod. And then when she came back, she would have a question, usually about one of her children. Over the course of the day I was there, I got the distinct feeling that she was talking to my grandfather. I knew he was in the room as soon as I walked in, just as I'd suspected he would be - he would never want her to go through something like that alone. It was as if he were guiding her through the whole thing, telling her to hang in there, telling her that the kids would be there soon.

Because of my grandparents' relationship, I always had very high expectations for the love and romance that lay ahead for me. I credit that, above all, with having led me to my husband. Their love for each other taught me what true love is, and that it transcends "till death do us part." My grandmother is 92 years old and has two degenerative conditions. At some point, she will go to join my grandfather. As sad as this makes me, and it does make me very sad, I know that there is a part of her that just misses him, and is looking forward to their being together again, and I can hardly begrudge her that, after all she's done for me. Plus, I miss him terribly too, so I can only imagine how much more she does.