Loss

Several weeks ago, my eighty-seven year old uncle died. He'd suffered from Alzheimer's for the past few years and was already in precarious health, so when he succumbed to the sudden onset of pneumonia, his death was not unexpected, and even seemed merciful. In his final year, he had slipped gradually away from his family, drifting further into a world that even my aunt, his beloved wife of sixty-three years, couldn't truly share.

He was one of the most honest, decent men I've ever known.

They met on a cross-country train trip, during WWII—when he was still a handsome young naval officer on his way to ship out and she a student nurse. "It was really a pickup!" she told her older sister—my mother. "But I told Mom my best friend introduced us." Theirs was an innocent affair by today's standards. (From lack of opportunity, not desire, my aunt always insisted.) Three days and only two tentative kisses later, she left the train at Los Angeles in tears, while my uncle continued on to San Diego to board his ship—bound for Pearl Harbor. They exchanged letters for close to a year and married the very day he arrived stateside again—not an unusual thing in wartime, but a bit scandalous in a straight-laced family like ours. They went on to have two handsome, successful sons, a number of adoring grandchildren, and a life rich in family memories, rewarding careers, world travel, and above all—lasting love and respect for one another. Sixty-two years later, they still behaved like young lovers, still held hands while they watched TV, and still adhered to their lifelong rule of sharing a tender goodnight kiss, no matter how difficult their day had been.

Shortly before my uncle's death, I gave them a rerecorded collection of songs popular during WWII, and as I watched them dance together to "The White Cliffs of Dover"— their favorite wartime melody— I was moved to tears. The tall young naval officer was now a sadly gaunt, stumbling shadow of the man he'd once been, with no remaining memories of evading German U-boats in the North Atlantic nor of the horrendous landing on that bloody beach in Normandy. The pretty young nurse's hair had gone snow-white, and both of them suffered from arthritis and poor eyesight, but the love and devotion in their eyes was unmistakable—"Everlasting." Ten days later, when he passed away, he went gently into that good night with my aunt at his bedside, still holding the hand of the man she'd adored her entire life.

Perhaps because they're about long-term marriages or relationships, many of our books deal at some point with loss. The very first book in the Everlasting series, Linda Cardillo's moving "Dancing on Sunday Afternoons," tells the story of an Italian woman who still mourns the loss of the firebrand husband lost in the tumultuous union struggles of the early twentieth century. At the end of her life, though, she finally discovers that the true love of her life has been right there with her all along—in the loving and steadfast person of her second, though less glamorous husband.

Since that first book, the "Everlastings" have tried to explore, in differing aspects, what it is that allows love to last—to survive marital turmoil, loss, and even heartbreak. Our books say that love—real love—can survive anything. That true love can endure almost anything--family estrangement, separation, distrust and suspicion, death, divorce, dark secrets and long-held resentments. Extra-marital affairs and even the simple boredom and the apathy inherent in long term marriage can be overcome, and once survived, can even make a good but troubled marriage stronger. In my own book, this month's "The Secret Dreams of Emily Porter," the heroine leaves an abusive and demeaning marriage only to face a new loss so deep she fears she can't survive it. When she tries to handle her grief by retreating into a world of dreams and memories, it takes a tremendous strength of will, a seemingly miraculous pregnancy, and the love and tender support of a stranger to make her understand that life must go on, and that it can be worth living.

This month's other "Everlasting" is Holly Jacobs' touching "The House on Briar Hill Road." It tells of a different kind of love and loss-- the loss to cancer of a beloved mother-in-law, who has become more like a mother to the book's lonely young heroine. That is the essential message of these books—that life can and must go on, through good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak, through love's exhilaration and tragedy's worst blows. To paraphrase the words of a song popular in the sixties, "If the song is to go on, we must do the singing."

And in somewhat the same way, the "Everlasting Love" series will go on-- in a different format, perhaps, and under a different banner, but we'll still be here, still believing that lasting love is worth looking for, and still worth writing about. For every great love has a story to tell.