Love and the end of everything
About a year ago,
Eva said something that,
in all the times we’d be together after,
would, when I remembered it,
cast a sort of halo over the present,
as if my recollection of her words alone altered the atmospheric conditions of the moment,
softer, yes, but stabbing,
right in my sense of chronological time,
like when we were in the sea and I couldn’t perceive anything else,
no restaurants, no people, no cars, no shops, no commerce, no horizon,
it was just us in the sea and I made a small approving sound as I watched her tread water and thought about all the tiny actions coordinating to keep her afloat,
the unimpaired integrity of her body's working order,
the most essential thing about her, about anyone,
and I loved her more intensely than usual because I remembered that all of this will end.
About a year ago, we were in bed together, and what she said was,
If something happens to me, I want you to know that life with you was beautiful.
P.S. Happy birthday, my love.
Thank you so much! My wife, who is in the final stage of Alzheimer's, is named Eva. She cannot talk to me anymore, but I am praying that God gives her one sentence at the very end. That sentence would be exactly what your Eva has said. In the meantime, body language will have to do. Our love has never been stronger. Whatever happens, at the end, I will say these words and long for a nod of her head.
I read this three times and immediately saved the quote in my phone so I can revisit it whenever I need a reminder to see life as a beautiful story. It made me reflect on how important it is to remember that everything has an end.
Our brains trick us into thinking things will always be like this. We get overwhelmed, wondering how we could possibly endure this forever. We snap at our kids because of the yelling, the fighting, the mess. We stumble through sleepless nights, waking again and again to the cries of a newborn.
But one day, it stops. Whatever it is. Our children grow up. We leave jobs or coworkers move on. The people we once loved or complained about fade from our daily lives. The things we rushed for lose their urgency. And somehow, it all becomes part of a beautiful story.
We love those kinds of stories in theory—movies that make us cry, where the protagonist grows through love and loss, pain and joy. But when hard emotions show up in our own lives, we resist. In the depths of depression, we wonder if joy will ever return. In the messy middle of learning, we convince ourselves we’ll never be good enough.
But if we can hold on a little longer. If we let ourselves move like water, flowing through the bends and turns… we might begin to see life for what it truly is: not a static moment, but a story unfolding.
And this moment? It was always meant to change.