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Thursday, January 24, 2013
Love Stories
Have love stories been co-opted by romance?
To me, most love stories are the ones that live on and on and on. Romances can break, fall down, get up, fall down again, get obliterated along the way by another romance. This cycle to repeat itself over and over again. Unless one is in a long term marriage or partnership and still respect and honour each other. Not too many of those around in my observation.
I'm talking other love stories. The ones that stick around and hang out and support and sympathize and cry with you and almost identify you. The ones within families. The ones with lifelong friends. And with dogs. And cats and turtles.
I've never had a bad day with my dog. We just love each other to pieces. I grieve when I'm away from her. And she from me. Her dictionary is enormous. Her sensitivity to my moods acute. As mine is to hers. She is there through thick and thin. A love story.
I have a friend in Dublin. I fell in love with her when I was 5 and she was an import to our school from England. She had this English accent and was forced to sing a song in Irish. The class laughed and laughed with the encouragement of the evil teacher but I was in absolute awe of her lack of embarrassment. Completely unselfconscioous, she went right through to the very end of the song and even bowed. We email each other every day and send each other books we love. When we get together it is like the conversation is picked up from where it ended the time before. Sixty years is a true love story.
I think it goes without saying that my love for my daughters and granddaughter is a love story, though there is now an enormous gap in the story of my younger daughter and me. A gap that may remain. The same with another who was as precious as my daughters to me and severed contact without reason. We all have stories like those. But have to move on. To the love stories that are possible and continuous.
I was reminded of this when an old friend called today. She has had unimaginable health issues. It has almost become a joke as bits of her body break down or succumb to the cancer or heart trouble that invade her periodically. Now it is stenosis and arthritis and a hernia. It is mind-boggling. But our love story of artistic support and sympathy and occasional tears counter balanced by hilarious laughter binds us together. Forever I like to think. But forever is an illusion. Forever is a dangerous word.
I only have to count the love stories in my life in the zone of now. And I run out of fingers.
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Treacherous ground here! I hardly trust myself to comment.....A lot could be said, but I'd have to pick my way carefully. But I will agree that without our various love stories our lives would hardly be worth living. What is that trite saying....? Love makes the world go 'round? Or not.
ReplyDeleteIn my dream last night I realized I loved someone dear to me so much, it made me cry and woke me up. I am glad I got to feel that deep emotion because I don't feel it so much during the day when I am being tough. I suppose that is a love story. xox
ReplyDeleteHave at it Molly, it's an open forum for other thoughts. Mine is merely an offering and you are so free to disagree or tangent off.... :)
ReplyDeleteXO
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Yes Irene when the mind is unleashed it is an awesome thing indeed.
ReplyDeleteI remember weeping out of control for a dead girlfriend one night, the loss of her was so profound I had never really dealt with it before. And now, alas, many follow her.
XO
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You have articulated something that is very difficult to. I discontinued my weekly gratitude list blog posts because I was getting embarrassed about the love stories that were and are part of my day to day living. It was getting to be difficult to explain in responses to comments. I finally took the gratitude list to a private offline journal and am happy with that decision.
ReplyDeletePeople with love stories in their lives are blessed. You and I are.
Buddy died several months ago. There was nothing to be done. He was old and sick and in pain.
ReplyDeleteWe had a choice not vouchsafed to most humans. We could extend his life with palliatives - expenmsive drugs which would mask his suffering and do nothing to cure him. We chose instead to take him to the vet and kill him, because we loved him (glasses are put down; books are put down; pets are killed when the only choice is pain and suffering).
Buddy had a good life. He was a rescue dog, chosen by my son, and he lived with us for about six years.
He was a mixed breed; part German Shpeherd, tall and powerful, gentle, loving and inteligent.
We miss him always.
I was feeling very sorry last night for my daughter's partner, who lost our love by deserting us. I don't think she realized that would happen.
ReplyDeleteRamana:
ReplyDeleteMine are in a jar that I fill with little love notes when they strike me.
We are truly blessed, my friend.
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Marc:
ReplyDeleteI can completely relate. When our Tara had a stroke and we had to put her down it was agonizing. Years later I would look at her picture and cry.
I can't imagine a life without a trusted canine. My house wouldn't be a home.
They give us so much more than we give them.
Deepest sympathy on your loss.
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Yes Hattie we form deep bonds with our children's partners and grieve when they leave.
ReplyDeleteI've been there.
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All love stories - romantic, companion, friendship, family - are worth telling. Love in all its forms is what makes life worth living.
ReplyDeleteSAW:
ReplyDeleteYes but most forget the non-romantic love stories or are not aware that they ARE love stories.
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With your writing you always make memories surface in my mind.
ReplyDeleteThen
the dog
I love Callie but she just came to the house from out of the woods
covered with mud - do not like that and had to wipe her off a number of times :(
As I'm on a long Victor Hugo read at present:
ReplyDelete“To love or have loved, that is enough. Ask nothing further. There is no other pearl to be found in the dark folds of life.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
He doesn't qualify "love" as romantic love here - it could be love of anything, a place, a pet or any fellow-human - the key has to be the feeling emanating from the heart of the love giver, it's a kind of divine enthusiasm that forms the "pearl"
T:
ReplyDeleteThanks for the quote, lovely.
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a sixty year friendship! oh my
ReplyDeletethat is love indeed.
OWJ:
ReplyDeleteI understand. Ansa loves dead things, mouldering animal corpses, piles of dead fish and will ROLL in them for hours with ecstatic pleasure. Oh my.
The cleanup is fierce. But I still love her!!
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Laurie:
ReplyDeleteYes, amazing. I feel truly grateful, we have swum the dark seas and basked in the sun together.
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Glad to say Jenny and I still respect and honour each other, and long may it continue. But you're right, there are too many relationships where love has broken down, to be replaced by constant sniping and bickering. Very sad.
ReplyDeleteNick:
ReplyDeleteCongrats to both of you, you are blessed indeed. 60% of the relationships I know are target practice.
It hurts to be around such misery.
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Love in all its forms is so many and varied, it is a wonder that we use the same term to mean so much. Romantic, platonic, familial, sexual - all different in intensity and the types of emotions they bring up, but all called the same.
ReplyDeleteJohn and I have been together now for over 11 years (marriage and dating), with not much more than the occasional bicker (either when I've gotten us lost map-reading - still having trouble with my left and right - or when I've been frustrated with a computer programme, and he's asked the wrong question at the wrong time). But then, my parents have been married 34 years, and the only arguments I ever saw them have were over the map reading, too!