What Counts As Love

Painting by Chonkhet Phanwichien

WHAT COUNTS AS LOVE

The fact is that at this late date,
I'm still not sure what love is.
I know my sister never left my mother.
She married while they were living in North Carolina
but when my mother and father moved to Florida,
she and her husband followed, lived in the
upstairs apartment in my parents' house, then
later after my father died and they could afford it,
they built their own house next door
and there they stayed till my mother died.
I, of course, was in and out, never stayed,
couldn't have stayed if my life depended on it.
Still, if you'd asked my mother who she loved best,
she'd probably have said me. But that always based
on the given of my sister's presence, the fact of her.
She never left. She never considered leaving.
And did Harold, my brotherinlaw resent this?
No, he never questioned it. He called my mother Mom.
This was all fact. It was given.
Now, the years have passed. My mother's long dead.
Harold also. But my sister's still there, kids grown.
My father is buried in North Carolina
but my mother there in Florida.
My sister moved her grave once,
bought a plot large enough for all of us and moved her,
taking care perhaps that they not lose each other in the afterlife.
I don't think she was always kind to my mother.
Old ladies can be a pain sometimes.
But she promised her she'd never be put in a nursing home
and she wasn't.
Toward the last, she had to move my mother in with her
and she kept her till she died.
I was away.
I went back from time to time and stayed for a while
but I always left.
If you asked me if I loved my mother, I'd say yes.
But what I'm starting to wonder is:
if you put all the romantic concepts aside
and all the philosophical notions,
how much of love is simply being there,
how much of love is just staying?


Albert Huffstickler

Posted over on Nerve Cowboy