Love and other acts of human kindness

"I'd like to make love, and then I'd like you to go. Because I need to stay here and if you make it hard for me, I may cry so hard I'll never stop."

Afterwards, she gives him a note which says, "Go now. I love you. Go now."

I miss my mother so much sometimes I think I might crawl out of my skin. I look for her in mirrors, in gardens, in smells. I feel her standing with me at times, and sitting on the end of my bed at others. This emptiness is often unbearable, yet I can only imagine what my father goes through on a daily basis. They shared the kind of love most people can only dream of, and my most fervent wish is that one day I should find something equally as wonderful.

We think of falling in love as the most magical part of any relationship but it's simply not so. When Grant describes to a nurse his early courtship with Fiona and the tale of how they were married, he muses that most people think of the early stages of any relationship as being the most romantically significant ones; that the thrill of falling in love and the gestures of devotion eclipse the more mundane realities of these same relationships later on. But, he says, when you look at a marriage, at everything you've become and the depth of love you've shared ... well, it makes all that happened in the beginning seem rather superficial.

I delight in telling the story of how my parents fell in love. It's a wonderful story and it makes my heart feel happy. But I never realised until tonight how perfectly correct Grant is. Relationships are difficult, frustrating, fraught with temptation, blame and sometimes pain ... it's what we do to get through those things together that makes a partnership spectacular.

My mother regretted a lot of things, but when the time came for her to die she was thankful of nothing greater than the love my father gave her, and the life they built together. Cruel fate may have acted as love's interrupter ... but to destroy it would be impossible.

Peace out (to my dear mutti, shining bright somewhere over Orion).