Sitting in
the doctor’s office this morning I was reminded that: love songs matter, love is
not obsolete, true love will last forever and it truly takes a real woman or
man to know that nothing trumps love.
Running
exactly five minutes late for my doctor’s appointment, I arrived
with a bountiful amount of unused energy and found myself seated next to eighty-
eight year old, named Martha. Soon Martha and I began to chat as I devoured my yogurt
cup.
I learned she
was the grandmother of three, two twins’ girls, Martha and Elizabeth named
after their respective grandmothers and a grandson Grayson, all in their late
30’s. She was the mother of five, three
daughters, Katie, Claire, Josephine (named after Napoleons Josephine like me,
she loved the love letters they exchanged), and two twin sons, Brick and Branch.
Martha love Cat on a Hot Tin Roof thus the name Brick and L'Armour books).
She’d
until a month ago been married for sixty five years to Hugh. Hugh is now
deceased and buried at a local cemetery, in plot 35, across from her parents
and an older brother who died during the depression. Martha visits Hugh every
day. She takes him flowers, talks to him and keeps him updated on the family “goings
ons”. Though she is looking for another husband very soon. She figures to continue visiting Hugh daily until next Spring when she moves with her daughter and new husband to Florida. Until then she wants to ensure Hugh gets lots of her time. She want be coming back to visit his grave or the city one she leaves.
Hugh was a good man says Martha. The two met and
married within two weeks. It’s hard to describe the feeling that arise when an
eighty-eight year old woman tells you she was driven by “passion and unquenched
fires of sexual tension” to marry a handsome young Navy man ten years her
senior. Hugh was an excellent provider
so says Martha. He was an electrician who owned and operated his own thriving
business for more than forty years. Now the
twins own and operate the family business.
Hugh and Martha, settled in marriage she said
after the passion died down and began to raise a family. Martha worked doing the
books at the store for a couple of years, then she became a high school math teacher
when she was thirty. By that time Hugh was forty he encouraged her to go
back to school. Apparently Hugh got his “groove” own with a blond named Shelly, hired in the seventies as a store clerk. Sending Martha to college was a way for High to spend more time “letting his passions flow”. Hugh told her about the
affair when Shelly got pregnant and had an abortion. Hugh wanted the baby.
Shelly did not.
Hugh
,before he died, gave Martha permission to date and marry again; within a year of
his death would be considered respectful. Given she is such an outgoing and
vivacious woman, he did not want to keep her from having a man in her life. He
did, however, suggest she see if Bill Reynolds was available. Bill was the man
she fell head over heels in love with when she was thirty-five and left Hugh
for. She and Bill were together for fifteen years before Hugh wooed her back
home and to the family she left behind. Martha told me those fifteen years were
the happiest of her life. But she got to missing being a mother to her own kids,
who were preteens, so, she left her lover for her husband. Martha laughed at
this point. I just smiled. She and Hugh got back together and at fifty she deliver
her change of life babies Brick and Branch.
The twins
were conceived on the night Bill married Caroline Olson. When Martha learned of
his marriage she got misty eyed, started missing Bill “something terrible”. She
bought an Al Green record, got drunk and wham-bam she and Hugh hooked up. Bill
and Caroline were married twenty years before she got breast cancer and died.
His second marriage lasted five years and ended in divorce. About a five years ago
when Hugh was diagnosed with cancer the two reconnected while Hugh was being
treated. The two have been “discreetly” seeing each other since before Hugh
died. Hugh apparently never knew. I suspect from his death bed proclamation Hugh knew.
Life for Martha now days consist of remembering the good times. As she and I sat talking and being ear hustled by the entire doctors office, including the nurses, Al Green began to play. Martha blushed and smiled. She told me every time, Al Green comes , she remembers the love she has for Bill. I finally asked how she could leave Bill and she confessed she did it for the kids.
Her love for Hugh was over long before it began and she had her regrets about leaving her kids behind. But, she did not feel right taking them from Hugh. He was their father and a good man. At that time, there were only the three girls. Soon she found Bill could never have kids and she wanted to be mom. Her fairytale ended to soon. So one Saturday she and Bill made love all day to Al Green and the next morning she left the only man she truly loved for her kids. Things between she and Hugh were good. Separate beds, yet, there was harmony and happiness. She truly believed it was the right decision and the fact her girls and sons were in life long marriages and never divorced proved it to her.
Martha soon settled back in her seat and listened to
Al Green as a tear slipped down her face. As Martha sat remembering life with
Bill, I realized that love songs are the key to so many wonderful moments in
our lives.
Everyone has a favorite love song. Who can’t remember
the song that was playing when they met that special someone. Love songs are the
light in which through yonder window comes forth the lyrics of love.
By the time Al Green got to the course of “I am Still in Love With You,” Martha
(who has a wonderful voice) was singing and crying. Soon the whole waiting room
was rocking with Martha as each of us contemplated the life of an eighty-eight year
old woman still moved by a love song.
When I think of love I think of Bill Withers "My Imagination".
Rock on Martha.
