The beauty of love

When my beloved godfather left this vale of sorrow and tears for a better place, he slipped away quietly, softly and without warning.

There was no struggle or fight against death’s hand, for it seemed that he went willingly. Later, those of us who witnessed his graceful departure would talk repeatedly of how quickly and unexpectedly he had disappeared from mortal form. In death, he was as dignified as he had been in life.

No more than seven or eight minutes before Tony crossed the Great Divide, my godmother, Mary Nell, I and three others had sat around his bed chatting of normal things like heels that are too high for feeble feet (I, fortunately, was not one of those with that complaint) and the trials and tribulations of building a house.

We had no idea that death intrusively sat there among us, waiting for the appointed time to complete the assignment. Then, the time came and he went. Another good man lost from a world where his kind is an increasingly rare breed.

“Funerals are pretty compared to dying,” proclaimed Blanche Dubois, the faded Southern belle in Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire.” “Funerals are quiet with such pretty flowers and, oh, the beautiful boxes they pack them away in. And unless you were there (when they died), you would never guess there had been such a struggle.”

But with Tony, there was no struggle. He slipped away quietly in a blink of an eye, taking one last breath in this life and his next in blessed eternity.

When the day ended, there was much to remember, things forged like a fiery brand into my heart. I won’t forget the tears of heartbreak that followed, the kind nurses and doctors who were so appropriate and compassionate, how my godmother clung to me and wept and the prayer as we stood around the bed and thanked God for the man we had been privileged to love.

Some of those memories, most surely, will fade as time passes but one will stay stubbornly clear. Before his death, my godmother sat inches away with her right hand resting on the bed close to Tony’s head. Even though it called for her to sit in a somewhat twisted, uncomfortable way as she chatted with me while I sat in the window seat, she never let her fingers move from his cheek.

Without a doubt, she wasn’t aware of what she was doing. She was simply a woman still strongly in love after 48 years of marriage.

How can a man be more blessed?

To live a life surrounded by love is a precious gift. To die surrounded by it is to have that precious gift perfectly wrapped and adorned with a bow.

Is there anything as lovely as that?

Yes. It’s to be privileged enough to watch such love in its final moments of togetherness. It is to be reminded in a gentle yet forceful way that it is still true: That of all things, the greatest gift is love.

How lovely that is.