Ernest Hemingway once said, "If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it". I first read this in my second year of university and I was highly bothered by it. It seemed to go against everything that I knew to be true as the hopeless romantic that I was. Didn't love always prevail in the end?? Wasn't love the very reason that we had happy endings in the first place?? While I've stood by my beliefs about love to this day...I've also never forgot that quote and how much it disrupted the very core of my being.
Last week, I had the most extraordinary day with my new friend, Ben...father of my good friend, Jesper. Ben lives in Victoria and has been in Ottawa visiting Jesper and his family for the past month or so. He came by the Gallery last week to spend the day and for the first time, I had the opportunity to meet this wonderful man that I had heard so much about. We went on a tour of the vaults, visited the restoration lab, had lunch and after Ben spent hours upon hours strolling through the European Galleries, the two of us sat together talking and overlooking the gardens for awhile. While we were there, it suddenly occurred to me what Hemingway must have been going through when he uttered those words. And just like that...my heart broke.
As much I adored meeting Ben and spending the day with him, I would have given anything to not be meeting him under the circumstances that we were; as Ben flew to Ottawa, he was leaving behind a moment in his life that we all know is coming but, for the sake of our own sanity, we pursue life in spite of it. This past June, Ben's wife died. He is here in Ottawa with his family to make the days and nights more bearable, along with everything else that becomes too hard to endure when you lose someone that you love.
If you can believe it, Ben and his wife had been together for 64 years...an accomplishment that is so rare in this day and age. Ben was now living in a world that no longer included his best friend and that sadness seemed to follow him everywhere he went. Of course, he still smiled and laughed and not only found joy in others...but brought joy to others, especially to me. But when you watched him, you could almost see the outline of the person that should have been standing next to him, holding his hand and looking at him longingly in a way that only a wife of 64 years could. You could feel her presence yet at the same time, you just knew that something inside Ben physically ached because she wasn't entirely there with him.
I cried that night when I went home. I cried because I had wanted to cry all day but I couldn't do that to my new friend. I cried because the very thought of a life without Steve would bring me to my knees. I cried because I knew that Ben was likely enduring the hardest thing that he would ever have to do in his life. And I cried because Hemingway was right. If you find yourself fortunate enough to walk through life with someone...a day will come when you will have to walk alone again. If you have the purest form of love, you will likely be separated by death and be left with only the beautiful memories instead of the resentment of divorce. But in the end, God will likely take you one at a time and that is the very foundation in which Greek tragedies are built on. Romeo and Juliet may not have known Hemingway but they certainly knew that a life spent together meant that they could no longer live life any other way.
Clearly, Hemingway had loved and lost. As it turns out, in its entirety, Hemingway actually said "There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it". I wonder if I would have felt differently had I heard the whole quote back in second year?? I wonder if I would have felt so sad for Hemingway that I wouldn't have risked the same kind of loneliness?? Probably not. Even now, there is no emotion that isn't worth risking for a life spent with the man that I love.
Last week, I had the most extraordinary day with my new friend, Ben...father of my good friend, Jesper. Ben lives in Victoria and has been in Ottawa visiting Jesper and his family for the past month or so. He came by the Gallery last week to spend the day and for the first time, I had the opportunity to meet this wonderful man that I had heard so much about. We went on a tour of the vaults, visited the restoration lab, had lunch and after Ben spent hours upon hours strolling through the European Galleries, the two of us sat together talking and overlooking the gardens for awhile. While we were there, it suddenly occurred to me what Hemingway must have been going through when he uttered those words. And just like that...my heart broke.
As much I adored meeting Ben and spending the day with him, I would have given anything to not be meeting him under the circumstances that we were; as Ben flew to Ottawa, he was leaving behind a moment in his life that we all know is coming but, for the sake of our own sanity, we pursue life in spite of it. This past June, Ben's wife died. He is here in Ottawa with his family to make the days and nights more bearable, along with everything else that becomes too hard to endure when you lose someone that you love.
If you can believe it, Ben and his wife had been together for 64 years...an accomplishment that is so rare in this day and age. Ben was now living in a world that no longer included his best friend and that sadness seemed to follow him everywhere he went. Of course, he still smiled and laughed and not only found joy in others...but brought joy to others, especially to me. But when you watched him, you could almost see the outline of the person that should have been standing next to him, holding his hand and looking at him longingly in a way that only a wife of 64 years could. You could feel her presence yet at the same time, you just knew that something inside Ben physically ached because she wasn't entirely there with him.
I cried that night when I went home. I cried because I had wanted to cry all day but I couldn't do that to my new friend. I cried because the very thought of a life without Steve would bring me to my knees. I cried because I knew that Ben was likely enduring the hardest thing that he would ever have to do in his life. And I cried because Hemingway was right. If you find yourself fortunate enough to walk through life with someone...a day will come when you will have to walk alone again. If you have the purest form of love, you will likely be separated by death and be left with only the beautiful memories instead of the resentment of divorce. But in the end, God will likely take you one at a time and that is the very foundation in which Greek tragedies are built on. Romeo and Juliet may not have known Hemingway but they certainly knew that a life spent together meant that they could no longer live life any other way.
Clearly, Hemingway had loved and lost. As it turns out, in its entirety, Hemingway actually said "There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it". I wonder if I would have felt differently had I heard the whole quote back in second year?? I wonder if I would have felt so sad for Hemingway that I wouldn't have risked the same kind of loneliness?? Probably not. Even now, there is no emotion that isn't worth risking for a life spent with the man that I love.
Of my day spent with Ben, one of my favourite moments with him was when we were sitting at the end of the day in the silence of the Galleries. Ben was telling me all about ballroom dancing with his wife during the war. If I closed my eyes and stayed very still, I could picture them as newlyweds in Denmark, young, in love and dancing the night away to the Vienna Waltz!! Ben spoke to me with a hopefulness, humour and a sense of wisdom that only comes with a unity lasting more than half a century. I felt privileged to be sharing in this moment and in his memories.
It was when Ben finally spoke to me about the eloquence of marriage that I began to realize that although Hemingway was justified in his sorrow, he was forgetting that love in and of itself is a happy ending. To love and laugh with another person and to be a witness to someone's life is the ultimate reward. Yes...the deeper we love means the deeper the pain when we are forced to endure it but, that's because the love is also enduring. The love still exist even though our other half may not. To create something so everlasting...something that outlives us and our physical presence is truly what fairytales are made of, and it's also what Ben and his wife are made of.
The impression that my new friend left on me is simply unexplainable. I was fascinated by his stories and his advice and his incredible outlook on a life yet to live. And while it's a life that will never be the same, it's a life that has been touched by the very definition of what God hopes for his children...to love with all your heart and all your soul. I don't know that I will ever stand in the European Galleries again without smiling and hearing the waltz in the background. I don't know that I will ever look at life and love the same way again and most of all, I will never look at my marriage the same way because thanks to Ben, I understand that "there are three people in a marriage; there is you and there is me and there is us". No matter what happens to you and to me, there will always be us. Us...is and always will be the happy ending.
1 comment:
Yeah! you did it! To repeat...beautiful message beautiful person. Awwww...
Anonymous (Marie)
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